


A Duel With Fate

by psocoptera



Series: Thirty Fic [29]
Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: 30Fic, Battle of Naboo, M/M, Slow Build, Time Loop, movie canon compatible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-14 18:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13013301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: The re-lived day is one of the strangest mysteries of the Jedi: a passage in a Jedi's life when the Force knots Time itself around their individual consciousness, allowing them to revise and repeat their actions until harmony with the Force is achieved.(Standalone story, see notes for series explanation.)





	1. A Knot

**Author's Note:**

> The Thirty Fic series is my long-term ongoing project of writing stories about characters turning or being thirty. The stories aren't related except by that one common thread. In particular, this story is unrelated to the other Star Wars story in the series.
> 
> This story is compliant with movie canon, but not with the Clone Wars television series, which I have not seen.
> 
> Major content note for canon-typical lightsaber violence, including death, dismemberment, and decapitation. I don't think anything here is darker than what's canonically in the prequel trilogy, except maybe by virtue of the premise.
> 
> I would not say the romance in this story is quite straightforwardly a Master-padawan relationship, but it is set in the Phantom Menace timeframe and so depicts a relationship with that age difference and that initial power/status difference.
> 
> Expect four chapters and a short epilogue, about 20k words. Story is completely written and chapters will be posted as fast as I can make final edits.

"…there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force."

Obi-Wan watches as the flames rise around his Master's body. Grief and anger are like a heavy weight on his chest. He tries to just breathe, to let it go with each breath, but he's not strong enough to move the weight. Qui-Gon's absence in the Force is like hard vacuum - maybe it's sucking his air away.

He hasn't slept well since the battle, but that night he stares at the stone ceiling of his room in the palace until his body's exhaustion pulls him under.

He does not dream.

When his eyes open he sees metal panelling, and startles the rest of the way awake. He bangs his head when he sits up and he realizes he's in his bunk on the Royal Starship, and he has no idea how he got there.

He can feel Qui-Gon coming awake in the bunk below him, roused by Obi-Wan's burst of confusion, and it feels perfectly normal for a moment before he remembers that no, it isn't, at all. He throws himself down to the floor, landing badly in his haste, and stares. Qui-Gon is somehow returned to him. And then it hits him: he's in Marmota.

***  
_The_ re-lived day _is one of the strangest mysteries of the Jedi: a passage in a Jedi's life when the Force knots Time itself around their individual consciousness, allowing them to revise and repeat their actions until harmony with the Force is achieved._  
***

Obi-Wan can hardly begin to name the emotions he must be throwing off - relief, terror, desperation. Qui-Gon is reaching his mind out in all directions, trying to find the threat to his padawan, peering at him with concern.

Obi-Wan makes himself choke out the words: "Master," he says, "I am between tomorrow and yesterday."

Qui-Gon relaxes, and raises his eyebrows at him, all warm interest. "Ah, Obi-Wan! Marmota now? Unexpected."

That isn't the ritual response, but Obi-Wan is only too glad to abandon custom. "You're _alive,_ " he breathes, "Oh, Master," and he sinks down, resting his forehead against the backs of Qui-Gon's fingers where they curl over the edge of the mattress.

He feels just a flicker from Qui-Gon as he takes in the implications; hears one deeper breath. And then Qui-Gon strokes his other hand over Obi-Wan's hair, projecting calm. "In the Force there is only today," Obi-Wan hears him murmur, the formality he had discarded before. 

***  
_Although a few non-Jedi have undergone Marmota, it is rare; in contrast, almost all Jedi will experience the looping at some point in their lives._  
***

Obi-Wan isn't sure how long he kneels there, soaking up Qui-Gon's presence. Finally he remembers that if they're going with traditional Marmota customs, his Master isn't going to ask him anything; it's up to Obi-Wan to decide what he wants to tell him. He lifts his head; Qui-Gon is looking down at him steadily, patiently.

He wants to tell him all of it, he's just not sure where to start.

"I've only just gone in," he tells Qui-Gon. "I mean, this is my first time back. My second today."

Qui-Gon nods. "I had guessed - "

"When _is_ today?" Obi-Wan interrupts, then catches himself. "Forgive me."

Qui-Gon sets one big hand on the crown of his head. "There is no shame in being off-balance," he says. "The first turn of your Marmota must always come by surprise. You will find your center soon."

Obi-Wan closes his eyes. "You died," he says, "In three, or four days. The warrior you fought on Tatooine was there, will be there, in Theed. He killed you." He's not sure he will ever feel properly centered again.

"Here and now, I am alive," Qui-Gon says. "Meditate with me, and put your thoughts in order. I think your loop is not so short that you must act immediately."

***  
_The archetypal Marmota comprises one wake-to-sleep cycle for the individual in question, but this is by no means universal._  
***

They meditate, and rehydrate some of the ship's rations for a morning meal. Qui-Gon busies himself with Anakin and Jar-Jar and Captain Panaka and the Queen, leaving Obi-Wan to compose himself until he thinks he can talk without falling to pieces. Then they close themselves in their tiny bunkroom, and Obi-Wan tells his Master every detail he can think of: the Gungans, the assault on Theed, the probably-Sith warrior, the generator room and the force fields. Anakin's unlikely flight.

Qui-Gon listens to the details of his death soberly, but seems more concerned with what Obi-Wan can tell him about the failure of the Bravo Squadron attack on the Droid Control Ship.

"When I said he had a great future as a Jedi I didn't mean that soon!" Qui-Gon says, almost chuckling; Obi-Wan supposes he deserves to be proud, but it's hard not to feel the minutes slipping by. He doesn't want to spend them talking about Anakin. "But that is a great weight for a nine-year-old boy, to turn the tide of a battle, and I don't like that the Gungans' lives hang on a fortuity." He frowns. "Nothing happens by accident, but if the Force is in motion in your Marmota, we cannot assume events will play out identically. We must advise Bravo Squadron to target the hangars."

"And we must go over our tactics against the Sith warrior," Obi-Wan says. He's actually getting a second chance; there's only so much he can worry about whether Anakin can repeat his improbable stunt. "If we can deny him the advantage of separating us I'm sure we can defeat him together."

He isn't sure; he's still half-terrified that knowing is not enough, that he's going to fail his Master again. That he might have to watch him die again, perhaps more than once. He refuses to think about what he knows about how Marmotas go; there is only the moment, the plan, the enemy to be defeated.

***  
_Jedi from species without circadian rhythms sometimes find their Marmota synchronized to some other chronobiological cycle, particularly those relevant to memory consolidation, for example cud-chewing in the Aus Bovii people of Rochsant._  
***

Obi-Wan had woken up from his first night of sleep on the ship, so they have one more night before they reach Naboo. Then three nights with the Gungans while they mass their army, then the battle. Obi-Wan does exercises and saber katas and tries not to stare at his Master like it's the last time he will ever see him. It is not. It is not. He's going to live. This time they will defeat the Sith together.

He tries to enjoy their little moments of foreknowledge, the smile they share when Padme announces herself. Qui-Gon, he thinks, had already known; Obi-Wan is glad to be in on the secret this time. They haven't told anyone else about his situation. While there is no prohibition on speaking of the Marmota outside the Jedi Order, Obi-Wan knows that outsiders usually find it hard to believe, or react badly.

***  
_The termini of a Marmota loop are not bound to quiescent moments for the individual. Many Jedi have reported Marmota experiences beginning or ending in the midst of action, including training, piloting, public speaking, and combat._  
***

They sneak into Theed. _The Sith_ , Obi-Wan thinks, _the Sith will be in the hangar bay_ , and so he's hardly paying attention to the streets around him when a stray blaster bolt catches Qui-Gon in the back. Qui-Gon doesn't even get a chance to speak; blaster fire to the spine is quick. One second he's next to Obi-Wan, the next he's on the ground.

 _I didn't have his back,_ Obi-Wan thinks in horror.

Obi-Wan wants to lie down in the street and die with him, but he knows he has to get the rest of the party into the palace. He takes Qui-Gon's lightsaber, instead, and when the Sith severs the hilt of his he's ready, he draws his Master's weapon and delivers a death blow before the warrior even realizes he's not disarmed.

The warrior hisses at him as he dies, and Obi-Wan starts the long walk back to Qui-Gon's body. At some point, the battle droids turn off - Anakin again, or improved Bravo Squadron tactics, he doesn't care.

The body is, at least, still there. Obi-Wan sits down and picks up his Master's hand. "Some second chance," he says bitterly. At least, the first time, he had fought with all his skill, and had only been stymied by the force fields. He can't believe he just lost his Master to something as stupid as droid-fired blaster bolts, something the least experienced padawan should have been able to deflect! How many times had Qui-Gon told him not to focus on the future at the expense of the moment? With all his concentration on the approaching duel, he had forgotten that other things could go differently as well.

The thought starts to bubble up inside him like acid: _and they still could_. He's in Marmota - this might not be any more final than Qui-Gon's first death. If he loops again, he can still make this right.

He goes through the days again, counts on his fingers, then on Qui-Gon's for something to do. Last time, he had contacted the Jedi Council the night of the battle. They had arrived three days later, he had told them about the warrior, they had decided to count the duel as the main part of his Trial, he had gone through the rest of the formalities and Knighthood meditation, and they had Qui-Gon's funeral on the evening of the fifth day after the battle.

It's horrible to imagine waiting five days to find out if he gets another chance, but Obi-Wan doesn't see what else he can do. Put himself in a trance, but Qui-Gon wouldn't like that; Qui-Gon would want him to take care of Anakin, even if this Qui-Gon never got the chance to say it. Besides, Obi-Wan is a Jedi Knight (or he was, last time, and might be again soon; he has no idea how rank changes work during a Marmota). He's supposed to be courageous. He can get through five days.

***  
_Although called the re-lived day, the duration of the Marmota episode can vary wildly. The shortest known Marmota cycle was experienced by Master Strai Sacchra, who found herself walking down a hundred-foot corridor in the teaching wing of the East Temple on Paffress, returning to the beginning of the hallway whenever she reached the end. Feeling no need to sprint or dawdle, she continued to walk the corridor at a comfortable pace, taking about twenty-five seconds each time, until on the four hundred twenty-second traverse she passed through the far archway and reached the top of the stairs._  
***

The Council Masters arrive, but Obi-Wan really doesn't want to have to explain how stupid he was.

"I'm between tomorrow and yesterday," he tells them, as soon as he is expected to begin his report. "Can we just - wait? If this still happened three days from now, I'll tell everything then."

"In the Force there is only today," Master Windu says reprovingly, but Master Yoda motions him to silence.

"Meditate you should," he tells Obi-Wan, not unkindly. "Hard for you this mission has been."

As an official order, this comes as a relief; Obi-Wan leaves Anakin to the Queen and her people, and retires to his room. In the discipline of meditation, he can acknowledge his grief and set it aside; he can let his fear pass through him, and still be there when it has gone.

He has to come out for Qui-Gon's funeral, and it is, if anything, harder than the first time. The first time, there had at least been certainty. Now there is the possibility of hope that it might not have to end this way after all, and it stabs. Obi-Wan stares into the fire and his lungs fill with the sharp edges of fear, catching his breath and cutting him from the inside. This cannot be his only cycle. He needs another chance.

***  
_The longest Marmota loop is thought to be that of Marco Stoneheaper on Dian, who, dying of senescence at the age of eighty-seven, was surprised to find himself suddenly a young man of twenty again. Stoneheaper shepherded his people six times through a difficult societal transition from feudalism to a parliamentary system, until on his final cycle he instead traveled to the remote Jedi monastery on Mhichil and spent the remaining sixty-six years in meditation, declaring that they could "just as well sort it out themselves this time"._  
***

He wakes up on the ship again, a gasp of relief and joy. Now that it's happened twice, he feels like he can trust it: he's going to get to do it again and again until he gets it right.

Obi-Wan laughs until he cries. When he finally winds down, he sees Qui-Gon standing on the floor beside their bunks, looking in on him with concern.

"Marmota," he says, helplessly, and Qui-Gon makes him meditate for an hour before he tells him anything else.

***  
_The story of Stoneheaper's six eventful lives on Dian, as written down by a fellow monk over the course of many years, is one of the few Marmota narratives to be widely known outside the Jedi Order. Most outside commentators have read it as pure fiction, and even serious investigators have been hard pressed to identify any character matchable to a real person whom Stoneheaper could not have already known before leaving for Mhichil._  
***

Obi-Wan is centered, mindful, flowing with the Force. They make it to Theed, to the hangar, to the catwalks, and Qui-Gon dies when the warrior kicks out his knee and stabs him in the gut.

Obi-Wan is two catwalks down when it happens, where he fell from his own kick, and he jumps back up and kills Maul almost on autopilot.

Qui-Gon is still alive when he reaches him.

"Hold on," Obi-Wan tells him, "You are not dying this time, we're going to get you to a bacta tank and you're going to be just fine."

Qui-Gon, maddeningly, shakes his head. "There will be many injured citizens, I can not - " he coughs, black blood oozing from the corner of his mouth - "live at their expense."

That's very principled, but Obi-Wan is the one who's up and moving; he starts looking around for something he can use to transport his Master.

But Qui-Gon grabs his hand. "Obi-Wan," he rasps, "You... you have to..."

Obi-Wan has heard this before. "Anakin, right," he says, still thinking there's time, there has to be time. He can run back to the hangar, find some kind of cart there - 

"No," Qui-Gon says, voice almost gone, "You work on those side blocks if you loop again," and then his presence in the Force is dwindling and winking out.

They had trained, while waiting for the Gungans to mass their army. Obi-Wan had taken the role of the dark warrior, had tried to imitate his moves well enough to show Qui-Gon what they would be facing. They'd practiced dodges and parries, tried to work out the best combinations to use against his double-ended weapon. It had been a little strange for Obi-Wan to realize that on the basis of two loops, he well might be the living Jedi who had fought the most duels against a Sith.

 _Side blocks_ , Obi-Wan thinks, and starts going over all the steps of the latest duel.

***  
_Ultimately, Jedi know that the reality of Marmota cannot be proven to someone who disbelieves. After all, once harmony is achieved, no evidence remains outside the Jedi's consciousness that any other course of events ever occurred._  
***

Perhaps because Qui-Gon hadn't asked him to train Anakin this time around, Obi-Wan feels ironically bound to check in on him. The boy is giddy about his accidental heroics, sad about Qui-Gon, moony over Padme, and it's all about an inch deep. It's hard to believe he could be dangerous, hard to imagine him full of anger and hate.

The funeral is wretched again, if less agonizing than the first two times. The hole in the Force where Qui-Gon should be is like a knocked-out tooth, and Obi-Wan can't stop poking the gap; Anakin, beside him, is like something sharp stuck in his gums. It's all raw and wrong. He can't wait to sleep, to wake up where things are right.

***  
_The possession of impossible information proves nothing when presented by members of an Order known for prophetic and telepathic powers. No one can remember some one else's Marmota to observe it directly._  
***

In the Gungan forest, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon rehearse again for the duel. Obi-Wan tries cutting a sapling, to imitate the reach of the double red saber, but it's worse than useless, far too slow and heavy. A lightsaber blade has no mass, no air resistance.

If they were back at the Temple, he could design a training simulation, but there's no equipment for anything like that here. If he had more time, maybe he could come up with a set of countermove drills that would be useful even if practiced solo, without the right opponent.

"You're between tomorrow and yesterday," Qui-Gon tells him with a quirked eyebrow, when Obi-Wan says as much. And that's fair - if what the Force wants from him is a new set of drills, then Obi-Wan has essentially unlimited time to come up with them. But he doesn't want to, doesn't want to keep looping around watching Qui-Gon die.

"Is it strange for you," he asks instead, "Knowing that if my Marmota continues, it will be like this, now, never happened?"

Qui-Gon opens his mouth a little, then stops. "I was going to say 'In the Force there is only today'," he says, "But that's not the whole answer."

He motions Obi-Wan to sit down on their makeshift training ground.

"If what we do now is going to be overwritten in the turning of time, then in one sense, my greatest responsibility must be to you, to give you aid and guidance you can carry with you to your next today."

Obi-Wan bites his lip; he hadn't thought at all about how his Master might see his role in his Marmota.

"But for the people around us, if this, now, is the only instant these particular consciousnesses will exist, then I am the Qui-Gon that exists for them. You will find your path to harmony in your own time; my responsibility must be to them."

He smiles at Obi-Wan. "So you see, I am pulled this way and that way, and it works out to much the same as always. In the Force there is only today."

***  
_The Marmota of fewest repetitions has been attributed to the padawan Blo Saabi, who allegedly took a mathematics exam, entered Marmota, took it one more time with greater success, and did not loop again._  
***

They fight the warrior on the catwalks, lightsabers whirling in lurid arcs. Obi-Wan leaps, slashes, blocks, and they're doing it, they're forcing the warrior onto the defensive. They've got him pinned between them, and Obi-Wan can practically feel a gap in his defense approaching, they're so close, when - 

It's a blade pass that takes Qui-Gon, a particular whipping lunge they haven't seen the warrior use before. Obi-Wan swings to parry the closer blade of the double saber, but the warrior deactivates it at the last second, continuing the motion with only the far blade extended. Qui-Gon has already moved to attack, anticipating Obi-Wan's block, and the unimpeded motion intersects exactly with his neck.

The desperate move has left the warrior unguarded, and even as Qui-Gon's head is tumbling down from his shoulders, Obi-Wan is plunging his blade into the warrior's unprotected flank.

And then Obi-Wan is the only one standing on the catwalk, two bodies at his feet.

His Master's head has rolled a little bit away. It's face down, facing away from him. Obi-Wan could go and pick it up, could go and have one last look at this Qui-Gon's face. 

Obi-Wan notices long, fine strands, grey and brown, scattered across the catwalk. When the lightsaber severed Qui-Gon's neck, he realizes, it also cut through the length of his hair.

He doesn't want to pick up the head. He doesn't want to look at the body. And somehow, most of all, he doesn't want to step on the helpless, fallen strands of his Master's hair.

They find him there, later, still standing, stilling the tiny breezes that move through the generator complex, so that none of the little strands will blow away.

***  
_Padawan Saabi also being one of the younger Jedi to ever report Marmota, some Masters at the time questioned whether his experience was truly that of Marmota, or whether he might have dozed off, dreamed he was taking the test, and then woken up when it began in fact. However, Saabi never reported a second more substantial Marmota, lending credence to the idea that, in fact, the Force just needed him to pass that exam._  
***

The next time he fights the duel, he's aggressive, pushing the attack where his normal forms would concentrate on defense. The Sith can't strike down Qui-Gon if Obi-Wan keeps him too hard-pressed to make the kill.

Obi-Wan can feel Qui-Gon's concern for him, but he tries to ignore it, to focus only on the rhythm of blades. Until Qui-Gon's worry flares into panic, and the Sith's lightsaber bites into Obi-Wan's groin, severing his leg at the hip.

It is a pain beyond fire. It is unimaginable. Obi-Wan crumples. Dimly, through greying vision, he sees the warrior transfixed on Qui-Gon's blade. _Yes_ , he thinks, of course, of course this was the solution. How easy. How perfect. He finally got it right.

He thinks he hears Qui-Gon's voice, but everything is black.

***  
_Marmota cannot be initiated or controlled, only lived. Perhaps Saabi would rather have saved his re-lived day for more dire circumstances. The Force chose otherwise._  
***

Waking is an awareness of the pressure of the bunk against his back, then the scratchiness of the sheet brushing his neck and hands.

Obi-Wan stays still, eyes closed, and feels the blood moving in his arteries. The beating of his heart in his chest.

He stretches, a little bit, ankles, knees, wrists, elbows. The motion-sensitive lights notice and the black inside his eyelids turns red.

The metal panelling of the bunkroom is decorated with a pattern of tiny indentations. Behind the walls he can feel the struts of the starship's skeleton, the flows of energy and coolant, the breathing of the atmospheric system taking his exhalations, like lovers passing a breath back and forth.

He can hear Qui-Gon breathing in the bunk below, slow, deep, and measured, catching just a little as Obi-Wan moves his fingertips to his forehead and down over his own face, down his neck, his chest, his intact, marvelous body.

"Did you ever die, in your Marmota?" he asks.

"You know this," Qui-Gon rumbles. "I did not."

"I thought maybe you could tell me now that I'm in mine," Obi-Wan says, "Maybe it's one of the mysteries that can't be shared before the right time."

The blood in his femoral artery is like a torrent. How does he walk around every day not thinking of how he has a rushing, raging river inside his leg?

"Oh, Obi," Qui-Gon says. "Oh, my padawan."

***


	2. The Bight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who took a chance on the first chapter! I'm so glad people are interested, thank you so much for your comments.

After coming back from dying, it takes until they're down on Naboo for Obi-Wan to stop lingering in the sensations of his joints and tendons and start thinking about strategy again. The duel with the Sith warrior is different every time. The Sith may embrace the dark side, but he's just as embedded in the Force as Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, looping, will never be exactly the same as he was the previous time, and so the Sith, reacting, will always be a little different too.

This is in contrast to the droids, who fire their blaster bolts in such consistent patterns that running the streets of Theed is already starting to feel a little like a kata. It's also a contrast to the Force-insensitive members of their party, who say exactly the same lines, at exactly the same times, unless Obi-Wan does something that ripples into them to change them.

He should be able to use that, he thinks. Maybe if they don't send the rest of the strike team off to go the long way, when they see the warrior, he can have them let off a barrage of blaster fire while they duel. The warrior won't be expecting it, friendly fire that would hit Obi-Wan too, but he should be able to learn to dodge it, eventually.

But, no, that won't work, he can't ask the others to shoot at him without explaining how he knows the warrior will be there in the first place. And even if they believe him and understand his plan, if they're firing because _he asks them to_ , it's not going to come out exactly the same every time. He could try to lead the warrior into the path of someone or something who is already firing. Maybe droidekas. But if he's doing the leading, their path, and the timing, will vary.

He tries it anyways, because it's battle day and he doesn't have any better ideas. But the warrior refuses to be led: when Obi-Wan falls back, deliberately stumbling, practically waving a flag saying 'I am easy prey', the warrior ignores him and redoubles his efforts against Qui-Gon.

Obi-Wan ends up just watching them go at it, back and forth along the catwalks, leaping between levels. Even suspecting how it's going to end again, Qui-Gon is enthralling to watch. The warrior has speed and power, but his style is choppy; he'll lash out in a combination of moves and then have to fall back. From this distance, it's easier to see how some of the twirls and twiddles of the double-ended lightsaber that Obi-Wan thought were feints are actually maneuvers to get the tricky thing back into a neutral position.

Qui-Gon, though. Qui-Gon is pure flow. Qui-Gon is grace and ineluctability, each motion cascading into the next one. It seems impossible that he can fail.

But he does, falling for the same hit to the chin that got past his guard the first time around, taking the same mortal blow to the chest. Obi-Wan doesn't scream this time, not when he's watching, not when the warrior dispatches him as well.

***  
_The Marmota of most repetitions is most likely that of Liyasitra, who fought continuously on the battlefield of Duvannon without food or sleep until over the course of about seventy-five hundred repeated days she had developed and mastered her distinctive and renowned fighting style._  
***

Coming back from the dead is even more intense this time, like every nerve of his body needs to give him a status report _right now_. It's not unpleasant, exactly, just overwhelming, his lungs and guts and the taste of his own mouth all competing for attention.

He tells Qui-Gon about his theory that the warrior is there to kill Qui-Gon specifically, perhaps recognizing the Naboo Royal Starship from their encounter on Tatooine.

Qui-Gon agrees that it's not unreasonable, but Obi-Wan can't figure out how to turn that into an argument, _so maybe you should stay behind or go with the Gungans or something_.

He keeps trying to argue it in his head, though, looking for the right words, and ends up mostly a spectator to the duel again. The words all go away once the warrior appears. Obi-Wan has seen some breathtaking sights - the cranes taking flight at Mar Essen, the mayfly dogwoods blooming at solstice sunrise, things like that - but the whirl of red and green lightsabers may be the most mesmerizing. It should be ugly but it's the farthest thing from it. He should be terrified, waiting for the moment Qui-Gon falls, but he's not.

Obi-Wan realizes he's picking up Qui-Gon's emotions, in the Force: complete absorption, focus, even a sort of joy. He can feel the Sith, too, when he thinks about it, like a low chant, _destroy, destroy_.

Jedi mostly aren't artists - duty to the Order pretty much precludes following one's own artistic vision - but there is a tradition of Marmota poetry.

Obi-Wan can't imagine finding words for this.

***  
_Exact count having been difficult to keep during some twenty subjective years of perpetual war, Liyasitra's record has been challenged by other archivists, who believe that Fregdol's 6876 three-hour expeditions into the Shifting Caves of Yab, enabling the first-ever mapping of the cave system, should take precedence due to the precision of the count._  
***

Dying is still painful and scary, but Obi-Wan is surprised to realize he also resents it as inconvenient for how it cuts into his strategizing time. He's been focused on his four precious days with Qui-Gon, and then the battle day itself, but the five days in Theed between the battle and the funeral are valuable training time. If he's really going to design drills - or, Force alive, an entire counter-form - he needs that time to work. 

Step forward. Step back. High guards. Quarter turns.

It all feels pointless. It's impossible to reconcile his feeling when he watches Qui-Gon fight, that he's seeing something consummate, with the idea that he needs to figure out how to improve upon it. Qui-Gon is a Jedi Master, and Obi-Wan can _see_ what that means. What is he supposed to contribute? Still, the Sith warrior keeps managing to kill Qui-Gon, and sometimes him. So, more side blocks. More pivots anticipating kicks and strikes, not just saber attacks.

He's never tried to do anything like this - maybe it's the kind of work that always feels like it's not going anywhere. But he can't help but feel like there should be some sense of progress, some rightness when he gets closer to a move that works, some growing fluency in the Sith's style. If this is what the Force wants from him, then he should be moving closer to the Force. He should be more in tune with the Force with every loop, with every refinement.

And he's not. He feels more out of step with the living Force than ever, and Qui-Gon's admonitions that he needs to open his mind to it feel more and more grating.

Finally he snaps, in the Gungan ruins of all places, when they need to be on their best behavior.

"Focus on the moment," Qui-Gon says, and Obi-Wan _hisses_.

"What _moment_ ," he says. "How is this supposed to matter, when it's just one of a hundred moments just like it - "

Qui-Gon somehow gets him hustled off to a little side alcove, between a couple of giant roots, where they're out of the way of the main party. It doesn't even take Obi-Wan the entire way there to realize he's being histrionic; for one thing, he hasn't been through anything near a hundred repetitions yet.

"I must apologize - " he starts, but Qui-Gon holds up a silencing hand.

"Sometimes surface harmony hides underlying discord," he says, not unkindly. "We like to talk about Sacchra walking down that hall, but Marmota can be more like Fregdol's caves, full of dead ends and unexpected turns. Frustration is an opportunity to consider your path."

Obi-Wan takes a deep, centering breath.

"I'm not unaware," he says. "The thing is, I don't really have much choice."

Qui-Gon raises his eyebrows.

"You're completely inflexible," Obi-Wan says evenly, proud of himself for not raising his voice. "Every time I wake up, I tell you how it goes, and lately I say 'what if we don't engage the Sith, what if we don't go to Theed at all', and you say the same thing about your responsibility, and then we go do it the same way again. I haven't even managed to move the battle to different terrain, which would honestly help a lot with the fighting style analysis."

"Ah," Qui-Gon says. For a moment Obi-Wan thinks that's his entire response, that Obi-Wan is just going to have to live with Qui-Gon's uncooperativeness, but then Qui-Gon goes on. "So what would you like to try?"

"Let's stay with the queen," Obi-Wan says immediately. "Let's go up with the pilots - it's ridiculous that we're relying on a nine-year-old boy to take out the droid army by accident, I can believe that the Force put me in Marmota to do something about that! Or take the field with the Gungans, maybe someone is dying there that the Force can't figure out how to save without us."

"It is sloppy to think of the Force as having a will," Qui-Gon reminds him. "It has a flow, but that is different. When we are truly aligned with it, our sense of our own will may vanish as well."

Obi-Wan knows he's a long way from aligned right now, and he knows Qui-Gon knows.

"But I agree to your experiments," Qui-Gon says. "We will go with the pilots - I share your concern for Anakin, and how he is entangled in this battle."

" _Thank_ you, Master," Obi-Wan says. This is a step in the right direction, he can feel it! But Qui-Gon isn't done.

"If your Marmota continues, next time, remind me about Cataclesius XVI. It should save you some frustration."

"Is that a planet, Master?" Obi-Wan asks. Qui-Gon chuckles.

"A poem," he answers. "You might read the whole cycle, if you have the time."

"Very funny, Master," Obi-Wan says dryly. But it would be something to do in Theed between rounds of swinging his lightsaber at an imaginary opponent. And it's one more reading assignment from Qui-Gon, one more way he isn't gone. "Thank you," Obi-Wan says again.

***  
_While young Jedi commonly imagine the Marmota as a day of action and drama, important duels and feats so impossible that even a Jedi could not perform them without secret practice, in fact many Jedi have found their Marmota to be a time of tranquility and reflection._  
***

Actually joining the attack on the Droid Control Ship reminds Obi-Wan how much he hates this kind of flying, but they are victorious, and with Anakin safely uninvolved. They fly back to the hangar and are just climbing out of their ships when an unfamiliar man comes running frantically into the bay.

"No," he says, "Evacuate, we have to - the generators - "

Obi-Wan gets one horrified moment of realization, and then everything tears apart in light and pressure.

***  
_Mace Windu experienced Marmota while arranging flowers and foliage in a ceramic vase for a table centerpiece for diplomatic talks between the Zeb and the Okkuta._  
***

"... so it's not by chance that we keep ending up in the generator complex," Obi-Wan finishes.

"But you still want to draw the warrior out into the halls of the palace," Qui-Gon clarifies.

"Yes," Obi-Wan says. "I know it doesn't make sense to worry about what the Sith has done in _past_ loops, if he blows the generators every time we both fall. I know those possibilities don't keep playing out on their own. But if we can keep him away from the generators, the queen can send someone to initiate an emergency shutdown, and then even if the Sith defeats us both, he won't be able to trigger an overload."

"Do you think the true future entails our defeat?"

"I don't know," Obi-Wan says. "I don't want to think so."

They stay with the queen's party, and Qui-Gon dies, but Obi-Wan kills the Sith. They stay with the queen's party, and Qui-Gon dies, and the Sith gets away, but he doesn't go blow up the generators, at least not in the next five days before Obi-Wan loops again. They stay with the queen's party, and Qui-Gon loses a leg, but he's alive, but Obi-Wan dies. They stay with the queen's party, and they both die. They stay with the queen's party, and Qui-Gon takes a bad burn to the shoulder, and the Sith gets away, and the generators blow again.

They stay with the queen's party, and Qui-Gon dodges, Qui-Gon parries, but the Sith can't take him down. There is blaster fire everywhere, droids and droidekas, the queen's people, and Obi-Wan spears the Sith from behind as Qui-Gon engages him.

It's like all the sound of blaster fire suddenly goes quiet, and Obi-Wan can hear himself breathing hard. He's alive. Qui-Gon is alive. The droids have gone quiet, he realizes. Victory in the skies again. And they're alive. They've done it.

"No," Qui-Gon says, like he's in pain, and at first Obi-Wan thinks he's talking to him, answering his thoughts, and then he sees Captain Panaka approaching them solemnly.

"The Queen," he starts, and then Obi-Wan can feel it too, the absence in the Force.

Instead of a pyre, they have a procession, with candles and thousands of people in the streets. She looks even younger in death. Anakin is furious and inconsolable.

A dark part of Obi-Wan still can't help but hope that her sacrifice is what the Force was looking for. But Qui-Gon says no, when he confesses this: "Can't you feel it, padawan? The Force will not stand for this loss." And when Obi-Wan wakes up on the ship again, he isn't really surprised.

***  
_Yoda, in his nine hundred years, has never entered Marmota. The general assumption for the most recent seven hundred of those years has been that he is so attuned to the Force that it has never been necessary._  
***

They go back to fighting in the generator complex, for a few loops. Obi-Wan is starting to see how that's where the deepest channel of the possibilities runs. Unless he exerts effort to bend the flow of events, they will play out much as they had that first time. He even gets stuck once behind the damned laser gates again, like he hasn't learned _anything_.

"But I have," he tells Qui-Gon's body, as he sits with him. "It's been a long time now, you know. I'm starting to lose track of how many times I've been Knighted. They don't do it in the loops where I die, of course."

It's not that Obi-Wan is becoming indifferent to Qui-Gon's death, but it doesn't overwhelm his emotional balance in the same way. Human minds weren't meant to sustain shock and grief that intense for that long; they are meant to slowly grow around it, to help the organism continue to survive.

"You'll have to tell me again about your Marmota," Obi-Wan says. "I'm running out of ideas again. And besides, I like to hear the story."

***  
_Qui-Gon's Marmota had been like something out of a holodrama - secret parentage, love triangles, rival claimants to the throne of Ketaraan. It had been meant as an easy assignment while he recuperated from a more strenuous mission, attendance at a coronation as a ceremonial courtesy to the Ketaraan royals._  
***

Letting himself get stuck behind the laser gates again, Obi-Wan tries something new.

"What is your name," he calls, while the Sith paces and Qui-Gon meditates. The Sith clearly hears him, lifts his head to stare at him, but does not answer.

"What is your name," Obi-Wan asks again, instead of screaming, after Qui-Gon falls.

The Sith's colorful face contorts. "Maul," he snarls, and then they fight, and Obi-Wan dies.

***  
_Archivists who attempted to classify Marmotas would have labeled Jinn's as belonging to the chain-reaction type, sometimes called "sequence puzzles": a cluster of events and revelations initially progressing in a farcical or tragic order that could be rearranged to bring about a peaceful and satisfying outcome._  
***

"Maul," Obi-Wan calls out, when the Sith extends his lightsaber's second blade. "Maul, wait."

The Sith's eyes might flicker a little, but that's all. "No," he says, and then they duel again.

The next time, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan leave their lightsabers in their belts.

"Maul, this doesn't have to be a fight," Obi-Wan says.

"Good," Maul grunts, and rushes them, and they barely flip away before he's on top of them. It's a bad fight that time, on the defensive from the very beginning, scrambling for enough space to recenter and attack.

After that Obi-Wan draws his lightsaber, but he still tries to talk to Maul, until he has to admit that his notion of somehow turning the Sith is hopeless.

The next cycle through, Qui-Gon dies, but Obi-Wan puts everything he has into dealing Maul an incapacitating rather than fatal blow. It takes him a couple of loops to do it, but he manages to sever both of Maul's hands, ending the fight with the Sith still alive.

Taken to the medbay, Maul refuses to speak, and has to be sedated and restrained for his own safety and the safety of those around him. He dies the next day of an apparent allergic reaction. The next time through, Obi-Wan asks the Council Masters coming from Coruscant to bring him everything they can about Zabrak biology and culture, and maintains a personal watch over Maul in the medbay until they arrive. That time Maul dies in the short window when Obi-Wan has gone out to meet the arriving Masters. The loop after that, Obi-Wan decides that the Masters will have to come in to him, protocol be damned, and watches, aghast, as Maul apparently spontaneously suffocates the moment Yoda tries to touch his mind.

"It must be a Sith defense against mind powers," Master Windu concludes, while the Jedi and queen and new chancellor all stand by helplessly. Obi-Wan can't pick up anything from Maul's mind at all, while he's unconscious, or while the laser gates hold them separate, except sometimes that desire for destruction. Otherwise he's just sort of blank, not even in a way that Obi-Wan would particularly notice if he weren't trying very hard to reach into him.

Master Yoda speaks to Obi-Wan separately later. "Wrong this feels to me," he says. "Against the current of the Force you flow. Between tomorrow and yesterday you are, but uphill you can make water flow not."

"I know," Obi-Wan sighs. Every minute he sits in the medbay near Maul, he feels the wrongness. At first he thinks it's some kind of Sith aura, until in a long, complicated meditation he untangles that and figures out that it's the weight of the Force itself pushing back. There's something here the Force doesn't want, even more than his other failed loops.

"Glad I am that feel it you do," Yoda says. "More receptive your mind becomes."

"Do you think there are things the Force doesn't want us to know?" Obi-Wan asks Qui-Gon, when he's back on the ship. "Like... take Anakin. The coincidences that brought us to Tatooine could have happened earlier, but they didn't. Does that mean the Force actively hid him from us until now?"

"You're personifying," Qui-Gon chides.

"I just mean that the natural currents now may be pulled by deeper, faster channels downstream. That the landscape isn't carved only from the top, but also from what already will be, further down."

"You've been reading Lessinga!" Qui-Gon says, delighted.

"I've been working through everything you have on your data crystals," Obi-Wan says. "You travel with a rather eclectic library."

***  
_No one knows whether Sith experience Marmota._  
***

He tries one more time to turn Maul, speaking to the Zabrak desire for self-determination. He can repudiate his Sith master, Obi-Wan says. Maul has the power to seize true freedom for himself.

Maul just spits at him, and when they fight, Obi-Wan is forced to kill him or be killed.

"It was a dead end," Obi-Wan tells Qui-Gon later. "It wasn't wrong for _me_ , not like it would be to stuff you into a ship and take off for the Lake Country, but it was wrong for him, or maybe for something that's meant to happen somewhere else, I don't know."

"The Lake Country?" Qui-Gon asks, amused.

"It's very isolated," Obi-Wan says. "Padme told me about it. I do talk to people," he says, to Qui-Gon's raised eyebrows. "It's a ten-day loop, I can't spend the whole thing just training, meditating, and reading, not every time."

In fact he's had many long conversations with Padme, with Captain Panaka, with Sabe and Rabe and Eirtae. Jar-Jar does not grow more engaging with longer exposure, and while Obi-Wan is resigned to the presence of Anakin in their lives, should Obi-Wan ever actually conclude his Marmota, it doesn't really make him any more interested in the child. He'll have plenty of time to get to know him outside of the loops. Panaka has the most interesting stories, once Obi-Wan figures out how to get him talking. He's reserved and unfriendly to the Jedi, but if Obi-Wan can get some of the pilots talking when they're off-duty, Panaka will sometimes join in. He has some experience with Zabraks, not that that had turned out to help Obi-Wan any.

"I remember," Qui-Gon says a little wistfully. "The people you have a chance to get to know during your Marmota - you will never know anyone quite that way again."

"I'm still mostly training," Obi-Wan says, and Qui-Gon puts his hand on his shoulder, in acknowledgment, in solidarity, in something Obi-Wan can't quite define.


	3. A Capsize

Obi-Wan is brushing his Master's hair when things change irrevocably.

He's only still a padawan by a technicality - he knows so much more than Qui-Gon about the situation on Naboo that he is, more and more, de facto in charge of their mission. There's still something soothing about some of the small formalities of apprenticeship, though - the little rituals and acts of personal service that develop between a Master and apprentice. Things like who pours the tea, or who goes first through a doorway. Most species who become Jedi desire some sort of touch or closeness, and so a Master and apprentice might share the little favors that friends do for each other: a Master might sharpen her apprentice's claws, or an apprentice might preen her Master's feathers. Or Obi-Wan might brush his Master's hair.

He had started doing it when he was much younger, after asking Qui-Gon if he used the Force to keep his hair from getting tangled. Qui-Gon had laughed and invited him to see for himself, and Obi-Wan had found the tangles at the base of Qui-Gon's skull and reached for the brush automatically, like he was back currying banthas for the AgriCorps. Over the years, it's been a time for Qui-Gon to quiz Obi-Wan on his reading, a chance for Obi-Wan to ask Qui-Gon questions without Qui-Gon looking at him, or just a quiet moment when no one is shooting at them.

Obi-Wan is completely unprepared to find himself thinking about the texture of Qui-Gon's hair under his hands. It's fine and pretty straight, completely unexceptional for light-skinned humans, and there is no reason he should be suddenly fascinated by it. There's no reason to suddenly be thinking about how close he's standing or the fact that he can feel warmth radiating from Qui-Gon's shoulders and back.

It would be so easy to take that one step closer - why is he thinking that?

Obi-Wan has never been very troubled by the desires of the body. He knows Qui-Gon sometimes shares physical companionship with people they meet in their travels: he says it can be a gracious and even compassionate action that affirms the participants, lifts spirits, and strengthens the bonds of fellowship. Obi-Wan has always found it easier to keep his body to himself. He's turned down the invitations that have been made to him. He's regretting that, suddenly. Maybe with some experience he would know how to manage or understand this feeling. His face and head feel hot, flaringly hot, like he's trying to project heat across the gap between himself and Qui-Gon. He realizes he's leaning forward, and straightens back up.

It hits Obi-Wan that Qui-Gon must be reading all of this, that Obi-Wan is venting emotion like he's giving off heat. Qui-Gon has been here for this whole wild rush of awakening and it must seem like Obi-Wan has abruptly gone mad. He finally takes his hands off Qui-Gon's hair and steps back with the brush.

"I - " he starts. He should apologize for his outburst, except you don't have to apologize for things that only happened in your own head, except his emotional tranquility is absolutely his Master's business. Qui-Gon twists around in his seat to look at him, and Obi-Wan doesn't know how to read his face at all.

"I'm sorry," Obi-Wan tries again, getting it out this time. "I don't - it must be a reaction. A trauma reaction. A new form of attachment." As he says it, it suddenly makes perfect sense... all those times he's sat with his Master's cooling body, of course he's suddenly noticing how alive it is. His hair - there was that time with the hair that is still somehow the worst time, even after all the other times. Why it's hitting him _now_ , who can say.

Qui-Gon eyes him for another moment. "Ah," he finally says. "Of course. As you like."

Obi-Wan escapes from their bunkroom with a muttered excuse about checking on the droids. A second wave of mortification is hitting, which doesn't make sense. He should feel better, having identified the nature of his emotions so quickly, but then, his body is still flush with that very first feeling. That sharp awareness. It's probably asking a little much, even for a Jedi, to think he's just going to snap back into calm. Sometimes the best way back is just to feel each feeling and let it pass through, so he's going to go do that, and maybe some droid maintenance while he's at it. The Royal Starship isn't that big, and Qui-Gon is pretty closely attuned to him, but Obi-Wan can feel the space of him deliberately looking the other way, so to speak.

He starts running a standard diagnostic on one of the new astromech droids, and lets himself call up the feeling of Qui-Gon's hair. He had wanted so many things, in that shocking instant. To plunge his hands into it. To feel it against his face. These are things that he feels, and he doesn't have to act on them, but he doesn't have to be perturbed by them either.

He checks circuits. He breathes.

After awhile, he starts to think that he was wrong in what he told Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan has done a lot of different meditation exercises since he entered Marmota. Awareness of the body, which helps with the always-jarring transition from the end to the beginning of the loop. Appreciation, of the days when he still has Qui-Gon. Opening to the Force. Patience. Energy for endurance. Etc. Lately he's started doing some more advanced exercises, the Invitations to Doubt, considered too dangerous for padawans. They're all about shaking convictions and questioning assumptions - good if you want to truly grapple with Jedi orthodoxies (or in Obi-Wan's case, try to figure out where he's getting stuck in his Marmota), but risky if the practitioner were to mistake "questioning assumptions" for "challenging them in a preemptively hostile way". Obi-Wan thinks he's been doing okay - he's worked his way through some thoughts about how the loneliness of Marmota compares with the normal difficulties of padawan friendships, with everyone leaving the temple on different missions all the time, and some mildly whimsical thoughts about the repetitiveness of Marmota being like the simplicity of Jedi robes.

His sudden desire for Qui-Gon had not felt like the stabs of grief he sometimes feels, fear that he'll never get to ask Qui-Gon what he thought of some work in his library, that Qui-Gon will never drag him through the Archives again looking for some obscure rejoinder to some argument of Master Windu's, or just fear of the next time he'll have to watch him die. Those feelings are frantic and choking and clinging and he can see why Yoda always says that fear leads to the dark side. His desire had felt light, physically light, warm and buoyant. It had felt like a moment of deep connection, or a flash of insight, like he's sometimes been feeling in meditation.

Apparently now he's questioning his assumptions about his feelings about his Master, which he didn't know he had, but is to be fair the sort of realization he's been literally inviting. He's not sure what it means, though, this whole new light in which he's seeing Qui-Gon. Is it just a fact to be acknowledged, or does it call for some kind of action? It's better to know than to not know, but he isn't - he can't - he isn't actually considering... wait.

Obi-Wan finishes the diagnostic he's currently running, but now that he knows what he needs to ask Qui-Gon, there's only so long he can sit here doing unnecessary maintenance before it feels more like hiding than coping.

***  
 _A few scholars have suggested that it is the celibacy of the Jedi that allows them entrance to Marmota._  
***

Obi-Wan steps back into the bunkroom, the first words of what he wants to say ready on his lips, and is immediately confronted by Qui-Gon's legs: he's upside-down in a handstand, toes nearly brushing the metal-panelled ceiling.

"Ah, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon says. "All well with the droids?"

"Why didn't you say no," Obi-Wan blurts, and then winces. That had definitely been going to have been more diplomatic.

Qui-Gon doesn't obviously react, but then, it would have had to have been a pretty big reaction for Obi-Wan to be able to see it from where he's standing. He lowers himself into a comfortable kneel, closer to Qui-Gon's face. (And away from his legs. Qui-Gon... has a lot of leg. Obi-Wan's been training with him for years but he's never been quite so aware of the length of his legs.)

"Did you need me to?" Qui-Gon asks. "Of course I can. You are my padawan, after all."

"I'm only barely your padawan," Obi-Wan says, rolling his eyes a little. "I've had to start asking Master Yoda if we can skip the Knighthood ceremony in the cycles I survive, I just can't take it seriously any more after going through it so many times."

"I would encourage you to try," Qui-Gon says, "But honestly it wasn't designed for repetition."

Obi-Wan looks at Qui-Gon's upside-down face. He could stop pushing this at any point, he feels sure, and Qui-Gon would never mention it again. But it doesn't feel like Qui-Gon is telling him he _needs_ to do that. So...

"Is that the only reason to say no?" Obi-Wan asks. "That I'm your padawan?"

"No," Qui-Gon says immediately. "Just you needing me to is enough."

Obi-Wan swallows. "What if I didn't want you to," he manages to say.

Qui-Gon closes his eyes for a moment, and then opens them again. "What do you want me to say," he says. "You can't understand how different you are now. The way you move, the way you carry yourself - even your presence in the Force is different. Plus you're suddenly well read in all my favorite authors who we never read together, and you're in the middle of a frankly legendary Marmota that future padawans will probably compare to Liyasitra's. My feelings have... responded. But they don't have to concern you."

Obi-Wan considers this. "So you didn't feel that way before."

"You were very young," Qui-Gon says. "And I always knew that _someday_ you would be a great Jedi Knight. But then suddenly I was meeting him."

It's hard to know what to say to that. Obi-Wan doesn't feel like he's changed that much, but he has been in Marmota for awhile. He supposes it starts to add up. He studies Qui-Gon's upside-down face again. "Can you come down from there?" he asks. "It's becoming disconcerting."

Admitting to that would normally be asking for Qui-Gon to conduct their next mission briefing while hanging from the ceiling - or making Obi-Wan hang from the ceiling - but Obi-Wan is sure that Qui-Gon understands that his feeling of awkwardness right now isn't entirely about orientations in space.

In any case, Qui-Gon walks a few steps on his hands, folds at the hips, and levers his legs down to the floor of their small cabin without ever making Obi-Wan feel he's at risk of being kicked in the face. He stands, ungirds his robes from where he's tied them up around his hips - Obi-Wan tries very hard not to watch that any more closely than he usually would - and then sinks down to kneel facing Obi-Wan, mirroring his posture.

"You didn't have those feelings before either," Qui-Gon says.

Obi-Wan thinks about it. "I didn't think so," he says. "But a lot of my thoughts about the body had you in them. I thought that was just because I knew you did those things, and I didn't. But now... I don't know." He trails off. He just mentioned _thoughts about the body_ to Qui-Gon and now he needs to take a couple of breaths through his nose.

"Ah," Qui-Gon says.

Obi-Wan feels like they're at another one of those moments that would be a perfectly reasonable place to stop. They've both shared their truths, now, and they understand something new about each other, and that's a good resolution of the event of his unexpected feelings.

At the same time, he feels like he's taken the first step into a whole new avenue of possibilities, and he's reluctant to turn back without exploring any of them. The air feels thick and electric between them. He feels hyperaware of the distance between their knees and the way Qui-Gon's thumb is tracing a small circle on the back of Qui-Gon's other hand.

"May I touch your hair?" Obi-Wan asks.

Qui-Gon takes a barely-audible breath. "You may," Qui-Gon says, and Obi-Wan knee-walks over until he's close enough to reach out and touch. He cards his hand through the back of Qui-Gon's hair, and Qui-Gon leans into his hand, just a little.

Qui-Gon's hair is soft and silky and a little disarrayed from hanging upside down. Obi-Wan finger-combs through it. They've fought together for so many years, it's second nature for Obi-Wan to pick up little cues from Qui-Gon about what he wants or needs him to do. Now he can feel Qui-Gon working to not give him any cues at all, to project a detached neutrality: his eyes are closed. His hands are still. But Obi-Wan can see the slight press of his lips together.

Obi-Wan kneels up, leans in, and kisses him. Not on his mouth, but on his hairline, above his temple. He can feel Qui-Gon smile. Qui-Gon turns, a little, and presses a kiss to Obi-Wan's chin.

Obi-Wan feels light, again, like he had before, and like he's not quite floating, but almost could, like the gravity in the Royal Starship has just reduced itself by three-quarters. He bends down, bracing his hand on Qui-Gon's shoulder, and kisses him properly. It's awkward for a moment and then Qui-Gon moves his lips against Obi-Wan's and it comes into focus. There's a sort of humming feeling all through his body, and he and Qui-Gon shift and twist around so that they can keep kissing while Obi-Wan settles back into a sitting kneel. Obi-Wan's hand moves from Qui-Gon's shoulder back into his hair, while he guides Qui-Gon's hand to his waist.

"I'm very confident I could stop this at any moment," he murmurs into Qui-Gon's mouth, reluctant to back away to a normal speaking distance. "So you can do things, you know. It doesn't have to all be me." He would like to be touched, he doesn't say, but Qui-Gon understands, and his hand starts a slow exploration of Obi-Wan's hip and side.

He thinks what he said wasn't quite correct - he's very confident that he could stop Qui-Gon with a word. He's less sure that he could stop himself, or, well, of course he could, but it's becoming harder to imagine as a choice he would actually want to make, in the absence of some compelling reason. What he wants is to be closer. He wants more skin to touch and fewer layers of robes between them. He wants to make Qui-Gon's studied neutrality evaporate. Qui-Gon slides his hand into the small of Obi-Wan's back and pulls him closer, and Obi-Wan feels like he's soaring.

***  
 _Jedi do not contract marriages or conceive children, the theory goes, and so they are essentially solitary; the universe would never be so cruel as to isolate a mother or a husband in a Marmota loop, but Jedi are fair game._  
***

There's a point when Qui-Gon is astride Obi-Wan's hips and his hair is falling around their faces and Qui-Gon laughs and his whole body shakes and Obi-Wan's whole body can feel it. Obi-Wan is realizing that the entire time Qui-Gon has been his Master, he's kept a careful space between them in the Force. It's different from the way that Obi-Wan has learned to shield himself from others - Qui-Gon is _there_ , active and engaged, he has to be, for them to work together. But Obi-Wan can see now that he's been an arms-length back, making sure that he doesn't intrude into Obi-Wan's own inhabitance of the Force.

Now Qui-Gon is letting go of that space. As they keep touching, and kissing, as Qui-Gon's breath goes ragged and his face goes flushed, he lets the buffer between them shrink and dissolve, until his feelings are exposed and they're as close together in the Force as their bodies are physically. Obi-Wan is fascinated by the reactions he can draw out of Qui-Gon, and the joy, and surprised wonder, underneath it all.

They have to put their clothes back on eventually to keep training, but even then, Qui-Gon doesn't take that step back again. It's different, trying to explain to Qui-Gon how Maul fights, the moves Obi-Wan has developed to counter him, when he's right _there_ in the Force, the feedback loop between them shrunk to practically nothing. It's different on Naboo, too; the Gungan ruins feel new and mysterious again when Obi-Wan feels Qui-Gon seeing them for the first time. Their three nights with the Gungans are... Obi-Wan has been trained to banish the word "magical" from his vocabulary, because of the way laymen misapply it to Jedi powers, but, "revelatory", maybe. It's a whole new way to be in his body. There's no form he's trying to master, there's no objective he has to achieve, except feeling. It's a whole new way to be in the moment, and it's a whole new kind of power to see what he can do to Qui-Gon. Sometimes there's urgency and sometimes it devolves into just touching, just appreciation.

He has some bad days after Qui-Gon dies in the generator complex as usual. Maybe it was his fault, maybe Qui-Gon would have lived this time if they had just trained harder instead of being so wrapped up in each other. But truthfully, it's mostly guilt that he can't really regret those nights before. Being with Qui-Gon like that, he had discovered something beautiful that he had never imagined could be - had never even thought of it, and then there it was, like a new color, or a new dimension in space. Obi-Wan is awake at the turn of the loop, lying down in his room in the palace, closing his eyes to the stone walls and waiting until the moment when he hears the quiet noises of the Royal Starship again, and feels the deep reassuring Force-presence of Qui-Gon in the bunk below.

He reaches out mentally, automatically - Qui-Gon is so far away - and is startled when Qui-Gon's presence pulls away, shields himself, when Qui-Gon scrambles out of his bunk to look up at Obi-Wan uneasily. Obi-Wan sits up to look back at him, hunching under the low ceiling, curling in on himself in more ways than just his shoulders. He feels a terrible falling feeling, like the pit in the generator complex has opened up inside of him.

"Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon asks. His hair is a mess from sleep. "Obi-Wan... how long have you been in love with me?" He sounds baffled, and worried.

"Master," Obi-Wan grits out, trying to reel in all his messy feelings. "I am between tomorrow and yesterday."

Qui-Gon goes absolutely still for a moment. "In the Force there is only today," he says, slightly too fast, and then he's reestablishing himself in Obi-Wan's Force-sense, deliberately unshielded again, a careful step away.

***  
 _No evidence supports the celibacy theory. Non-Jedi from asexual and autogamous species experience Marmota at the same vanishingly small rate as non-Jedi from sexually reproducing species, as do the billions of individuals from sexually reproducing species who are personally aromantic, non-breeding, or without attachments for whatever reason._  
***

Technically Obi-Wan doesn't have to tell Qui-Gon anything - he could claim the privacy of Marmota - but he wants to. Partly from the urge to justify himself, and partly because if being honest with Qui-Gon is the most intimacy he can have with him, now, he wants that much, at least. So he goes through his usual story about the number of days and number of cycles; the Gungans, the Droid Control Ship, and what he knows about Maul.

"And in my most recent loop, we discovered a mutual attraction and consummated it," he adds at the end. "We were both surprised." He wants to say more, he wants to explain how it had made the worn-in steps of the loop bright and new again. How special it had felt to be so close. It's so hard to find the words, though, sitting here facing Qui-Gon over breakfast - it feels too personal to be turned into a mission report. Not that he's violating Qui-Gon's privacy, exactly... this Qui-Gon, now, is the only Qui-Gon there is, now... but like he's being presumptuous, trying to explain Qui-Gon to himself. "We were very happy," he says finally.

"There is no passion, there is serenity," Qui-Gon murmurs.

Obi-Wan bows his head. He looks at his hands. He hadn't known he was in love until Qui-Gon told him. He doesn't know why Qui-Gon before had never used the word. "Love is a stone," one of the poets in Qui-Gon's data crystals had written, some non-Jedi from a species Obi-Wan's never heard of on a planet he's never seen. He hadn't understood that at all. Now he imagines himself holding a rounded river stone, heavy in his hand. It could be thrown; it could smash and bludgeon if he held it tightly. But instead, he can cup it in his palm and feel its smoothness and the way it's been ground and polished by the river. It doesn't have to do anything, it can just exist. It can just be treasured.

"There is serenity," Obi-Wan echoes.

He meditates. He works on training Qui-Gon to defend himself against Maul. It still feels easier than it ever had before, even though Qui-Gon maintains that space in the Force between them. Obi-Wan still remembers what had been effective, when he had that closer feedback. Qui-Gon doesn't flinch when Obi-Wan repositions his elbows or leans in close to demonstrate one of Maul's moves again. He seems to be determined to not let Obi-Wan's feelings change how he behaves toward him at all.

The loop where he kissed Qui-Gon had been a fluke, Obi-Wan decides. Or, not a fluke, but a thing that could only happen once, that very particular way, and he had just had the luck to catch it exactly right. Like an eclipse, or the mayfly dogwoods blooming on their one day of their planet's long year, a rare, beautiful event that there was no point in wishing you could have over and over. He gets to remember it and be glad it happened once.

He thinks that right up until Qui-Gon finds him the night before the assault on Theed, where they've found themselves a sleeping nook separated from the queen and her people.

"Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon says quietly. He sounds troubled. "I think I owe you an apology. When you first came back from tomorrow... I didn't understand." It's dark where they are, and Qui-Gon's face is shadowed. "It didn't make sense to me that I could have allowed or encouraged what you were telling me. I closed my mind to the possibility."

"In the Force there is only today," Obi-Wan says, trying to reassure him. "I don't bear any ill-will - "

"Well, I regret it," Qui-Gon interrupts. "I find myself jealous of my past self, who was evidently much smarter about this than I have been."

Obi-Wan blinks.

"I would like to kiss you," Qui-Gon says. "If I'm - close enough to him - "

Obi-Wan kisses him. Qui-Gon makes a little surprised noise; it's absurd and charming. Kissing him is both the same as it had been, the shape and taste of his mouth, and different: Qui-Gon before had all the experience kissing, Obi-Wan now has all the experience of Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan gets his hands into Qui-Gon's hair and kisses him until they both have to break off and regularize their breathing.

"You are him," Obi-Wan says, when he can say it steadily. "Unity of the self, you know. We're both leaves on a river, caught in an eddy - the Force just decided to let me count how many times I'm going around before we go downstream again."

"Girshian," Qui-Gon says. "See, this is what I mean."

"I think the translation where it's plankton in a gyre is more faithful," Obi-Wan says. "But I like the river."

"I think as much as I like Girshian's work, you should keep your concentration here and now where it belongs," Qui-Gon says, voice wry, and Obi-Wan leans back in like he's asking for.

They get some knowing glances from the handmaids in the morning, and a frown from Panaka, but it all rolls right off of Qui-Gon's calm focus. Obi-Wan can feel everything, the gap between them gone again. As they enter Theed and start working their way through the streets, he thinks they feel like a pair of hands, palm to palm, pressing and balanced and ready.

The feeling of balance wears off somewhere around the hangar bay. Qui-Gon might be poised for the fight, but Obi-Wan is still the expert in it, and he's surprised by how fiercely protective he feels. Of course he's always wanted to protect Qui-Gon, but he's never felt so capable of actually doing it. It's never felt so much like the natural order of things. Maul tries to go after Qui-Gon, like he always does, but Obi-Wan presses his attack and forces Maul onto the defensive. He slices, Maul blocks; cuts up, and Maul deflects; but Maul's out of position now. Obi-Wan stabs, and Maul falls.

Obi-Wan almost can't believe it, like it must be some kind of trick, but Maul's death is clear in the Force. Obi-Wan looks towards Qui-Gon; Qui-Gon is alive and unharmed and he can hardly believe that either. Qui-Gon is a blaze of mixed emotions, relief and pride and gratitude, although even as Obi-Wan watches Qui-Gon pulls it all back in until he's regained his usual composure. It's the first time Obi-Wan has really understood what it takes for Qui-Gon to go forward into Theed, knowing what has happened in all of Obi-Wan's loops before.

"We should find the others," Qui-Gon says.

Right. The last time he and Qui-Gon were both standing at the end of the battle, the queen died instead. She should be fine - nothing should change in a part of the palace where Obi-Wan wasn't - but it's possible that some minor thing he did earlier spilled forward somehow. The handmaids' knowing glances meant that someone forgot to buckle a shoe or something. He shouldn't assume... but he wants to believe...

In fact the queen is fine, and Anakin is fine, and Panaka is fine, and the pilots who usually live have lived and the pilots who usually die have died, and Obi-Wan lets himself start thinking it. This is it. He's done it. He won't formally exit Marmota until after the sixth night in Theed, the night they usually hold the funeral, but he thinks Fregdol must have felt this when he filled in the last cave passage on his memorized map. Master Windu must have felt this when he saw the flowers in their final arrangement. It's a satisfaction that goes right down to Obi-Wan's bones, to his connection with the Force.

There is business to attend to, between Naboo and the Trade Federation, between the Queen and the Gungans, business that Qui-Gon is less willing to neglect than Obi-Wan usually is. There are late nights with Anakin when he thinks to ask whether there were any people aboard the Droid Control Ship, and his glee is tempered by the realization that he has taken lives.

"People die in pod racing," Anakin says. "But nobody _means_ them to. Sebulba did, I guess. I never did. I didn't mean to blow up the ship either, but everyone cheered, and I cheered, so it was _like_ I meant it. And I'm glad the droids didn't shoot all the Gungans."

"Jedi must sometimes act to protect," Qui-Gon tells him. "All lives are precious, even the lives of those who would hurt us. But sometimes, to defend peace, we do what we must."

"I don't even know how many people were there," Anakin says. His voice is small and his little forehead is drawn down.

"I know the Queen is planning a celebration of the peace and the alliance with the Gungans," Qui-Gon suggests. "Do you think we could ask her to remember those lost on both sides, in her speech? Or we could have our own vigil, privately. When a Jedi dies we stand for a long time, to honor their life and think through our memories of them."

"Are you going to do that for the Sith too?" Anakin asks.

Obi-Wan has spent days - weeks - watching Qui-Gon's body burn, and he's never thought about what becomes of Maul's body. He thinks he might have reacted with anger, even hate, if Anakin had asked him that before. But he's never even realized that this was a conversation Anakin needed to have.

"I do grieve for him," Qui-Gon says. "I could see that he was very talented, very powerful. But gone awry. Distorted from what he could have been. We should take some time to be sorry about that, and about the influences that brought Neimoidian citizens to a ship orbiting Naboo."

Anakin nods. It feels so strange to Obi-Wan to be here, essentially a bystander to this conversation. They're all going to have to settle into new orbits - Qui-Gon as Anakin's Master, Anakin as his padawan, and Obi-Wan as a Jedi Knight. The Council is unlikely to rush to separate them - it's not unusual for new Knights to continue to work with their former Masters, there's no sense in throwing away a successful partnership with years behind it - but Obi-Wan might also be given his own assignments. They might separate for weeks or months at a time and see each other when they're both back at the Temple.

"Will you be happy to see me?" he asks Qui-Gon, in their suite in the palace. It's a different room than Obi-Wan usually gets, usually Anakin is off with the queen or Jar-Jar or something, but here they have three rooms together. Obi-Wan has been sleeping in Qui-Gon's, though. "If I'm off on a solo mission, and I come back to Coruscant?"

"I will," Qui-Gon says. He plays with Obi-Wan's fingers where their hands rest between them. "I'll be very proud, and worried, and glad to see you, and when you have a padawan of your own I'll probably have all sorts of unnecessary advice."

Obi-Wan laughs a little. "I thought you were going to tell me I should focus on the here and now instead of the future."

Qui-Gon rolls a little closer. "I'm glad you still have hope in the future, through such a long Marmota."

"I do," Obi-Wan says, and kisses him.

The Knighthood meditation feels different this time than it ever has. The first time, Obi-Wan was still so devastated from Qui-Gon's death; most of the other times, he was going through it by rote, thoughts already on the next loop. This is the first time that becoming a Knight has truly felt like a bridge to a new role in the Jedi Order. Yoda didn't come with the Jedi Council representatives this time, but Master Windu oversees Obi-Wan's Knighthood ceremony with Qui-Gon. Afterwards, the three of them discuss the importance of investigating the Sith. Master Windu is keenly interested in Obi-Wan's experiences with Maul in earlier loops.

"From everything we know about the Sith, they are greedy for power, and work through manipulation as well as violence," Master Windu says. "I don't believe a Sith Master would have given up when you took him prisoner."

"We must be on the lookout at the Queen's celebration tomorrow," Qui-Gon says. "If the apprentice has failed, perhaps the master will move."

There could be an entirely new battle tomorrow. Entirely new dangers. Obi-Wan could have finally figured out how to get them both out of the time loop alive only for one of them to die the next day. That's always been true, though. That's life as a Jedi. Better to be out there moving forward than trapped in the same endless loop.

Obi-Wan falls asleep in Qui-Gon's arms, looking forward to a day he's never seen.

***  
 _Across the galaxy, there are many celibate religions but Marmota is peculiar to the Jedi._  
***

Obi-Wan wakes up alone, and for a moment he has no idea where he is. But it's all too familiar. The bunk. The ship. He's still in Marmota.

Obi-Wan _howls_. He pounds the wall with his fist - maybe the paneling gives, maybe his hand does, he doesn't know. He can feel the ship shaking around him. It's dangerous, to lose control in the Force, but he can't stop himself. How can he be back here?

"What!" he screams. "What do you _want_ from me?"

The Force doesn't answer, but he feels Qui-Gon's hands on his arms, holding on to him.

"Obi-Wan!" he's calling, trying to get through to him. "Obi-Wan!"

Obi-Wan clenches his fists, and then, in one long exhale, he makes himself let them relax. He feels the ship return to its normal rhythms. Qui-Gon's beloved face is creased with worry.

"Thought I made it to tomorrow," Obi-Wan says hoarsely. "Guess I'm still between yesterday."

Qui-Gon looks baffled for a moment, and then it dawns. "You're in Marmota," Qui-Gon says.

Obi-Wan looks at him, trying to remember how it had felt to believe he was done. To have hope.

"I'm in Marmota," Obi-Wan agrees. "But I'm going to find a way out. If the Force won't let me go, I'm going to find a way to cut the knot."

Qui-Gon, if anything, looks more worried. "You cannot escape your destiny," he says.

Obi-Wan smiles bleakly. "If my destiny wants me, it can let me know any time. Meanwhile - " he takes another deep breath, centering and calming himself again - "Meanwhile here I am again. Let me tell you what we have to do, and then we should check on Anakin, he probably felt me shake the ship and I don't want him to be worried."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In knot terminology, a capsize is when a knot changes form into a different structure.


	4. A Cut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note for this chapter: a character takes a reversible but lethal fictional poison in a time loop context, expecting either a time loop or the antidote. Not quite suicide, but drug misuse, I guess?
> 
> Also a reminder that this story is compliant with prequel trilogy movie canon, but not Clone Wars television canon.

Obi-Wan's hand isn't injured from hitting the wall, and he does his best to convince Qui-Gon that he's fine, and in control of himself. There's a moment in Theed, when the doors open to reveal Maul, when Obi-Wan wonders if he'll be able to defeat him this time. Maybe it only works when he lets himself feel his feelings for Qui-Gon instead of burying them deep down like he's doing now. But he can still see the holes in Maul's defenses, now that he's found them once, and Maul falls.

There's another moment later when Qui-Gon is politely asking him if he'd like to join Qui-Gon and Anakin on a walk around the palace when Obi-Wan wonders if _this_ is what the Force wanted from him, victory over Maul without his feelings exposed. He's been keeping that careful space he learned about from Qui-Gon between them in the Force. If Qui-Gon suspects anything, he hasn't mentioned it. Obi-Wan doesn't think it can possibly be that simple, though, and he's not surprised when he wakes up from Theed on the queen's starship again.

He's completely serious about his intention to figure out a way to break out of Marmota. Just because nobody's ever done it, as far as he knows, it doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible; it would be arrogant to think the Jedi have already mastered every possibility. If the Force wants him to work on something else it's welcome to send him a vision or a prophetic dream or some kind of hint. A chance encounter with someone to send him in a new direction, if there's anyone left whose path he _could_ cross who he hasn't already met many times. He's open to it and would welcome it, if the Force would cooperate.

Meanwhile he's going to study. He needs to understand Marmota in as much depth and detail as he can. He'll start by reading or rereading everything Qui-Gon has in his personal library that has anything to do with Marmota - Lessinga, Girshian, etc. - and then he'll figure out a way to get access to the Archives. Somewhere in Jedi history there must be someone who knew something that can help him.

***  
 _Ki-Sun believed that there were two types of Marmota - those meant to change the course of events, like diverting the path of a river, and those meant to hone the Jedi, like sharpening a blade._  
***

Obi-Wan makes it through three cycles before he starts to feel frustrated. It's hard work, studying seriously without the ability to make notes. He's been trained since childhood in memory and memorization techniques but it's still more convenient to be able to jot down a stanza number for future reference, or a note to himself when three things occur to him at once.

It's lonely work, too. Before things changed, he used to talk to Qui-Gon if he came across anything particularly interesting in what he was reading. Not always right away - he did most of his reading in the post-battle part of the loops, and Qui-Gon was dead then - but the next chance he got. Just the feeling of holding on to his questions in anticipation of asking them was a little connection that made him feel less alone.

Now he doesn't feel like he can. It's not even that the last time he and Qui-Gon talked about Girshian they had their hands on each other, although that doesn't help. It's the weight of everything he isn't saying. Obi-Wan has never lied to Qui-Gon before, and maybe from a certain point of view he still hasn't - nothing he has told him is false, it's just that he's left some things out. But they feel like important things. To Obi-Wan, they are definitely important things, and he's sure Qui-Gon would agree.

He doesn't think Qui-Gon has any idea, though. Of course he will have noticed the new distance between them, but if anything, he seems quietly approving about it, like he's respecting Obi-Wan's new independence. For all Obi-Wan knows, this is something he would have been expected to start doing when he was done being Qui-Gon's padawan. Maybe Qui-Gon even thinks some earlier version of himself instructed Obi-Wan in this.

For his own part, Obi-Wan doesn't let himself look at Qui-Gon's hands or his mouth, and he definitely doesn't offer to brush his hair. He lets himself take his feelings out when he's alone in his room in the palace, like taking a stone out of his pocket. He traces over its curves and contours, appreciates its warmth from being carried, and then he puts it back in his pocket and tries to go on like it isn't there at all, like there's no weight to tug his robes askew and change his balance when he walks. There's an actual training exercise like that for padawans, moving with weights strapped to an arm or a leg and trying to hide which limb is affected from the other trainees. It's supposed to teach Jedi to conceal their injuries from their opponents. Obi-Wan doesn't like thinking of his feelings for Qui-Gon as a wound or a weakness; they feel as durable as a stone, that's part of why he likes that whole metaphor so much. But he reminds himself that concealment exercises are also good for hiding strengths. He's just going to keep moving forward through his Marmota, carrying everything secretly and safely, until - 

There's a knock on his door. "Qui-Gon sent me to get you!" Anakin's little voice calls. "He says we're going to go for a walk and you can come with us but the time is now!"

"No, thank you, I'm going to read!" Obi-Wan answers, picking up the data crystals. He almost doesn't think anything of it, but then in the next loop, the same thing happens again: he's in his room, letting himself acknowledge that if he ever does escape from his Marmota, he's going to want to tell Qui-Gon about his feelings, when Anakin knocks on his door saying that he wants to go for a walk and Qui-Gon says now will be better than later. Different day of the loop, different time of day, same message, delivered by a highly Force-sensitive child. If Obi-Wan ignores it he's probably asking for a meaningful dream where a round river stone gets thrown at his head, or something.

That night he gets his thoughts in order and goes to talk to Qui-Gon. It's late; Anakin is already sleeping, one of thousands of peaceful minds in the quieting palace. Qui-Gon is still awake, though, finishing his evening meditation and stretches. When he answers Obi-Wan's knock, he's already dressed for bed, barefoot and down to his undertunic.

Obi-Wan swallows a little. Maybe he should have come earlier. Qui-Gon invites him in, though, and motions him to sit in the room's only chair while Qui-Gon settles onto the bed.

"It's not actually possible for me to say this without hoping for anything," Obi-Wan starts. "Even if it's only hoping for you to react well. But what I'm asking for is your advice."

"Really," Qui-Gon says. "You haven't seemed very interested in that recently." He   
says it gently, teasingly, but Obi-Wan wonders if he does feel shut out.

"Marmota is very strange," Obi-Wan answers. "I get to change bit by bit and then you have to keep dealing with it all at once. That's... that's sort of what I want to talk to you about, actually."

Qui-Gon raises his eyebrows inquiringly.

"We've been intimate in previous loops," Obi-Wan says, trying to be matter-of-fact about it. "I care about you very much, and I've considered talking to you about my feelings once I'm not bouncing between tomorrow and yesterday any more. But I believe I'm being nudged to act sooner than that."

"Nudged," Qui-Gon repeats. His face is calm and unreadable.

"I do keep asking the Force for hints," Obi-Wan says. "I think it gave me one." He spreads his hands on his knees and presses lightly. "I don't want to make a trap for myself of worrying every cycle about what you'll say this time around, and it feels manipulative to ask when I know - and you don't - that you've said yes before. But it feels wrong to keep it a secret, and... like I said. I can't tell you without hoping, at least a little."

"Ah," Qui-Gon says. He's quiet for a moment. "You could preemptively reject me, you know."

"Is that your advice?" Obi-Wan asks. "Tell you, but rule out the possibility - "

Qui-Gon holds up his hand. "I'm considering your options," he says. He shakes his head a little. "I admit I hadn't guessed any of this. You've caught me without any insight at hand."

"We could talk tomorrow," Obi-Wan suggests.

Qui-Gon lifts his hand again. It's almost like the gesture he would make for the mind trick, except vaguer, more indecisive.

"There wasn't anyone around in my Marmota who I expected to ever see again once I left the planet," Qui-Gon says, like he's thinking out loud. "There were times while I was unraveling all the threads that it felt awkward to ignore someone else's crisis at the moment, but there were no bonds of loyalty or trust to feel I was betraying in particular. If it feels like a deception to you to keep this information from me, I'm hesitant to tell you to teach yourself secrecy. But it could be painful for you to pursue this. You... you would surprise me, every time. I wouldn't ever be able to learn you the way partners do."

"So we're back to inform-and-renounce," Obi-Wan says.

"No," Qui-Gon says ruefully. "It feels too cruel to sentence my future selves to hear this from you and be immediately denied." He's looking down, he doesn't look at Obi-Wan when he says it, but Obi-Wan can hear the change in his voice. He can almost hear the way his heartbeat speeds up a little.

Obi-Wan gets up from the chair and sits down next to Qui-Gon on the bed. "It might be painful," he says. "Most of my Marmota so far has been about living through pain. I like this kind better than all the dying. If you think it isn't wrong for me to approach you, then... then I will. I am, and I will, after the battle, each time." He puts his hand on Qui-Gon's shoulder. "I wish you could remember. But it's still always you."

"Then I'm glad for my future selves," Qui-Gon says. "And for the moment."

It's a chaster first kiss than last time, but less awkward than the first one. They pull away simultaneously, checking in, although Obi-Wan can feel Qui-Gon's enthusiasm in the Force between them.

"There's a poem," Qui-Gon whispers. "About two Jedi sisters - twins - and one went through Marmota, and the other one wrote a poem about wishing she could remember it. _We were in the chrysalis together. I dissolved, and forgot. You persisted, and remembered. But we_..." He trails off. "Something. _We come out together_? Not quite. It's obscure, I haven't thought of it in a long time."

"I'll find it for you," Obi-Wan promises. "For a future you. If it's something you'd like to have."

"I have more than I'd ever thought," Qui-Gon says, and so Obi-Wan has to lay him down and kiss him more, it's as necessary as a side block or an overhand slice.

***  
 _But unlike Ki-Sun the master Avvera wrote that there was no duality. She wrote that every Marmota changed both the Jedi and the world in a significant way, and if the change was not always obvious, that was only a lack of perspective._  
***

Sometimes Obi-Wan thinks he spent the first year of loops after learning to beat Maul just learning how to study within the constraints of his Marmota. It probably doesn't take that long, but it's hard, and takes new kinds of concentration. Once he's exhausted everything remotely relevant from Qui-Gon's personal library, he has to move on to searching and reading in the Archives. Nothing from the Archives can be transmitted directly to Naboo, for reasons of data security and compatibility that Obi-Wan can't actually solve in the few days he has each time, but the archivists are willing to read _to_ him over the hologram. This is difficult at first, listening instead of reading, but after awhile he concludes that the spoken format is actually more suitable for remembering verbally, since he also can't write anything down.

Qui-Gon joins him for the hologram sessions and he finds a rhythm where the archivist reads a passage, he and Qui-Gon discuss it, and then the archivist reads the next passage and they keep going. Of course Qui-Gon can't remember anything they heard in previous loops, but he doesn't mind Obi-Wan referring to things he pointed out before. He often makes the same little joke about how that Qui-Gon fellow seems to have some good things to say. Occasionally when there's something that really doesn't translate well over the hologram - immersive recordings, full-color diagrams, that sort of thing - Obi-Wan will ask the Council representatives to bring it with them when they come from Coruscant. Yoda always starts out by saying that if the Force really wanted Obi-Wan to study, he would have gone into Marmota closer to a Jedi library, and then he makes the same little face and concedes that he does feel that the Force is with Obi-Wan in his request. Yoda usually comes himself in the cycles where Obi-Wan needs something brought from the Archives, and it's always nice to see him poke Qui-Gon with his stick and tell him how happy he is that Qui-Gon isn't dead.

"All right," Obi-Wan says to Yoda and Qui-Gon, one night right before he cycles. He's waved off his Knighting in favor of more time to read and talk to them. "I've been working through Avvera's treatise, and I wanted to see Nortine's interactive because she talks about it, but I think she's obviously right and he's obviously wrong. Nortine had a waking transition and he thought that at the moment of looping, the whole world changed back around him, _physically_ , while his body was simultaneously healed, like running the cosmic clock backwards for everything except his mind, so fast he couldn't perceive it as having duration. But Avvera says that the consciousness of the one in Marmota detaches from all physicality and moves back through the Force to the loop point in the same way that visions move back through the Force to the perception of the one having the vision."

"Why think you that right she is?" Yoda asks. "So funny is it to think of the world running backwards?"

"It is sort of funny to think of this tea undrinking itself," Obi-Wan says, looking down at his mug. "But, no. Avvera is connecting Marmota to a well-observed phenomenon. Just like the consciousness traveling back, visions may come from a future that does not then come to pass. That makes more sense than inventing an entirely separate physical process."

Yoda smiles and sips his own tea. "Agree with you I do, Kenobi. But what means this for you?"

Obi-Wan looks over at Qui-Gon, and back at Yoda. "Nothing, in particular, it's just interesting. I guess I've finally learned to worry less about the future than the moment."

Yoda looks between them. "Many visions I have had," he says. "Never Marmota. But if similar they are, then through your _feelings_ clearer a choice may become." He sets down his cup and raises himself to his feet. "Meanwhile in the Force only today there is," he says, and makes his slow way out of the sitting room where Obi-Wan likes to study.

"Did we just get Yoda's blessing?" Obi-Wan asks, after a few minutes.

"Were you looking for it?" Qui-Gon asks. He comes over to sit on the arm of the big overstuffed arm chair that Obi-Wan thinks of as his personal chair, and runs a finger down Obi-Wan's padawan braid. Obi-Wan shrugs.

"I still think that if I wasn't missing something, I wouldn't still be in Marmota," he says. "Whatever Yoda has to say I try to listen."

"Listening is always a good idea," Qui-Gon says, chuckling a little. "Obeying, I can't always agree." He looks down at Obi-Wan. "I wish I could remember reading Avvera."

"You liked it, we can read it again," Obi-Wan says. He looks up at Qui-Gon. "Want to see something else you liked?"

Qui-Gon doesn't answer in words.

***  
 _In his Marmota, Ki-Sun stopped a plague from spreading by identifying and blocking the leakage points in a quarantine blockade._  
***

Obi-Wan tries to think more about Yoda's question, what does his deepened understanding of Marmota mean for him. There's no obvious answer. He has the impression that if a scientist wanted to understand Marmota, they might pick at this question of how exactly it's like or unlike having visions, and come up with ways to test those ideas. But he finds it unnatural to try to think in that way. Jedi scientists are even more rare than Jedi artists - art can be a kind of action, but experimentation is essentially at odds with Force-guided right action. Obi-Wan had tried a lot of different things early in his Marmota, but every time he had meant to move closer to his goals. He starts following some tangents to Avvera, but it all feels arcane and irrelevant. Action seems hopelessly elusive.

Finally one day an archivist is asking him over the hologram what he'd like to read next, and he gives up on Eroon's monologue on dialogue (which seems to be arguing that it's very significant if the number of persons a Jedi speaks to during the final loop vs first loop of their Marmota changes, which Obi-Wan does not care about at all) and asks the archivist if she knows anything about the author of the chrysalis poem. He had looked it up many loops ago, and had read and memorized the whole poem, but it had just been cited as coming from a youngling reader from a few centuries back, and before that, a popular commonplace book.

The archivists help him track the poem back to the Old Republic era, when it was found in some fragmentary salvaged records, and was entitled "to my twin sister after 47 loops". The "47 loops" part had been changed to just "Marmota" in the later publications. 47 loops feels like a long time ago to Obi-Wan, now. His Marmota has been more than three times as long, measured in loops. Of course really you have to measure in days - he's nowhere near Sacchra's 422 repetitions, for instance, but he has actually walked down the famous hall in the Paffress temple, everyone does when they visit there, and it's not very long. Anyways, there are plenty of Marmotas on record with a count of 47 loops, including some from the Old Republic era, even, but the Old Republic indexing is terrible, and none of the first several they're able to find mention twins or sisters or anything like that.

He tries asking for blind searches for Jedi twins - there are more than he would have thought. Although the Jedi practice has long been to separate children from the same family upon adoption into the Jedi Order, twins have always been more likely to recognize their relationship if they crossed paths again. And back in the Old Republic days more Jedi entered training without giving up all family ties. The best monograph on the subject focuses on the careers of Jedi _brothers_ , which is the sort of almost-but-not-quite that makes Obi-Wan sputter to Qui-Gon over dinner until Qui-Gon gives up and distracts him.

"I found another source for you about twins," an archivist tells him on the last day of that loop. "It's a story of the Whills, about twin sisters who were both Jedi. Here, let me read: _The two sisters did everything together, in training and in battle. But one day the older sister went through the infinite mirror_ \- that's a Whill term for Marmota - _and the younger sister was sad that her sister had iterated without her. She vowed that when she went through the mirror she would find a way to take her sister with her. Because their bodies were interchangeable, they taught themselves to share their minds between their bodies, and when it was time for the younger sister to go through the mirror, the Force was fooled and took them both. The Force gave the sisters a gift of true knowledge and they became great teachers and leaders of many Jedi._ Although the Whills include it in their historical journals, we consider the story apocryphal, perhaps related to the Whill superstitions surrounding Force-sensitive twins in general. Is that useful?"

Obi-Wan is on the edge of his chair in the sitting room. In the current loop, the archivists know that he's researching twins, but not that he's been studying Marmota. The younger sister has to be the author of the poem. "Thank you," he says, and makes sure to get the reference code, and then walks in a dignified way befitting a Jedi down to where Qui-Gon is out with Anakin. (Obi-Wan jumps down all the stairs on the way whenever no one's around to see him.)

"Qui-Gon," he calls, when he sees him, and Qui-Gon turns. He raises his eyebrows at whatever he sees in Obi-Wan's face.

"Your poet figured out how to bring her sister into her Marmota," Obi-Wan says. "I still have no idea how to get out, but I think we could get you in."

Qui-Gon takes a step towards him, and then stops. "You told me you don't mind that I don't remember," he says.

"Sometimes _you_ mind," Obi-Wan says. "We could be two leaves in an eddy that know they're dancing together."

"I don't know if I'll agree every time," Qui-Gon says.

"I'll try to ask without expectations," Obi-Wan says. "Are you agreeing at least once?"

"I don't know what you guys are talking about," Anakin pipes up. "But I think it's better to remember than not remember. Like at least I can remember my mother."

"Thank you, Anakin," Qui-Gon says. "I suppose that carries the day in favor of remembering, then."

***  
 _The details of Avvera's own Marmota are not recorded._  
***

Qui-Gon agrees in the next loop, and the next, and the next, the same way his desire for Obi-Wan repeats, the same way he always finds helpful words for Anakin when he needs them. Some choices are character, not circumstance. In their times together after the battle, he and Obi-Wan start working on the question of how they can duplicate the feat in the Whills' story. Obi-Wan's and Qui-Gon's bodies clearly aren't twins of each other, but there are a variety of Force exercises meant to bring minds or Force-presences closer together. Qui-Gon's practice can't carry over between loops, but Obi-Wan's can.

He learns that after he's stepped in from being a metaphorical arm's-length away in the Force, he can take more steps in, until he and Qui-Gon are closer than he could possibly imagine. There is a level of closeness where he and Qui-Gon can speak mind-to-mind without words. There is a level where he and Qui-Gon can borrow each other's strength in the Force to levitate starfighters and piles of deactivated battle droids. There is a level where, if he concentrates, he can show Qui-Gon one of his memories. It's hard to know how best to use that - he doesn't think Qui-Gon needs to see himself die, and Qui-Gon says he'd rather just kiss Obi-Wan than see him remember other kisses. Sometimes he shows him Yoda talking about Avvera, or Maul in the medbay, or older memories from before they ever came to Naboo the first time. It takes a long time for Obi-Wan to figure out how to explain the trick of it to Qui-Gon, until eventually it occurs to him that he can share his own memory of the first time he got it himself, and that helps Qui-Gon see how it's supposed to feel. Qui-Gon shows him memories of his old Master, Dooku, who Obi-Wan never met, and places from his travels before he took Obi-Wan as his padawan.

The essential trick still eludes them.

"If I'm going to follow you back in the Force," Qui-Gon says, as Obi-Wan has heard him say several times before, "My consciousness needs to be more closely tied to your consciousness than to my physical body. I know my consciousness _can_ separate from my body, because I've done it in my own Marmota, or it was done for me. Visions can arrive spontaneously, but we also know how to seek them deliberately, so there must be a _possibility_ of intentional action here."

"But receiving a vision is the wrong end of the rope," Obi-Wan says. "We don't think about purposefully sending a vision back to ourselves, because unless we're in Marmota, we only think of Time as flowing one way."

"I think if I could get the detachment, the loop might take care of itself," Qui-Gon says. "We're not trying to take on the power to knot Time ourselves - I'm not sure even the Jedi should have that power, except at the will of the Force. We're just trying to make it possible for a second consciousness to follow a path that's already there."

They've tried conjoining their Force powers at the moment of the loop transition. They've tried being in the process of actively sharing a memory. It's harrowing for Obi-Wan to jump back to the past like that and feel the closeness of Qui-Gon inside his mind be instantly ripped away. Sometimes Qui-Gon on the starship catches a flash of that pain and loss. In a way, it's a strange return to the days when Obi-Wan jumped back with his mind full of Qui-Gon's death, except he has a lot more to explain to Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan can't handle the shock of severed communion every time through the cycle, it feels like it takes something out of him that doesn't replenish easily, and so sometimes he has the awkward business of explaining everything to Qui-Gon and then telling him that in this particular cycle they're not going to make any attempt to pursue the work he's just said they've been doing.

"Knowing when not to act is part of right action," Qui-Gon will say, or "I don't like to think of you hurting yourself," depending on the exact sequence and circumstances of the various parts of Obi-Wan's revelations to him.

Yoda always says, when they tell him about it, that what they're doing sounds dangerous but that he doesn't expect either Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan to listen. "Around you a great motion in the Force there is," he'll say.

Sometimes when they do try again, when Obi-Wan goes through that shock of aloneness again, he looks down at his body and almost expects it to be less there, somehow. He'll feel not quite solid, like something's missing. Of course his body never matches the self-image that his experience tells him he should have, but he finds himself thinking about it more, lately. Sometimes he touches his hair and wonders how it isn't long since grown out. Sometimes Qui-Gon touches his hair and says he'd like to see how it will look long.

"Maybe once I cut my braid for good I'll shave my head like Master Windu," Obi-Wan jokes. The next time they practice the deep connection exercises, Qui-Gon shows Obi-Wan a memory of himself as a padawan. It's strange to see Qui-Gon's hair shorn short.

"I suppose I could cut it right now and it would be back in your next loop," Qui-Gon says thoughtfully, when they're done, and Obi-Wan makes a face.

They're going to try the conjoining again, the tying of their consciousnesses together. It's been easier for Qui-Gon this time than in any loop before. Anakin is away with the queen and they will make themselves comfortable on Qui-Gon's bed and let their breathing and energy merge until Obi-Wan can feel the blood in Qui-Gon's veins and the thrum of his awareness of the living Force. Only Qui-Gon isn't here, which is strange.

He shows up late. They still have plenty of time, but he's later than they had agreed to start.

"Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon says. "I've had an interesting idea."

Obi-Wan looks at him more closely. He seems a little flushed in the cheeks, a little pale in the rest of his face. "What's that?"

"Well," Qui-Gon says. He sets a hyposyringe down on the seat of the only chair. "I've taken valquilitine," he says, a little self-consciously. "If this turns out to be the end of your Marmota, you should probably administer that within a few minutes of not looping. Please."

"Valquilitine is a poison to humans," Obi-Wan says blankly. "Difficult for Jedi to purge. You did _what_?"

"I've apparently died a great many times," Qui-Gon says. "It didn't seem like that big a risk. Valquilitine shuts down the body. The body I'm trying to detach from."

"I don't know what to say," Obi-Wan says.

"Join your consciousness to my consciousness and you can show me there how you feel," Qui-Gon says.

They sink into it holding hands - Qui-Gon's are too cold, in Obi-Wan's, already. They flow back and forth until there is no separate amazement, no worry, only the closeness. They let go, together, of any thoughts about the blood in anyone's veins. There is only the living Force and their presence in it.

And then something is different. Qui-Gon isn't sundered from him, but he's stretched away, somehow, so that the connection between them strains and thins. Obi-Wan remembers his body again, and his surroundings. He's back on the starship. Qui-Gon is a warm presence in the bunk below him. The last threads of their deep connection in the Force settle back into a comfortable awareness.

Obi-Wan can feel Qui-Gon wake all the way up, can feel the way he reaches his mind out in all directions, like he's trying to place himself in space. Or time.

Obi-Wan rolls out of his bunk and drops to the floor.

"Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon says hoarsely. "Obi-Wan, I think I saw Time."

Obi-Wan reaches for Qui-Gon's hand. "You remember?"

"We were on Naboo," Qui-Gon says. "It's not... it wasn't like Marmota," he says, struggling to sit up. "I was somewhere else, somewhere immensely full, like the difference between Tatooine and Coruscant. For a long time, or, not long, but... many..." He pulls his hands away from Obi-Wan's and spreads his hands apart, like he can show Obi-Wan the breadth of what he saw with a gesture.

"Time," Obi-Wan says, echoing Qui-Gon.

"I think so," Qui-Gon says. "And before that we shared a bed, and you taught me how to show you my memories in the Force. You're in Marmota."

"I know," Obi-Wan says. He feels tears in his eyes. "I think I understand how the Council must feel about you and your recklessness." He reaches for Qui-Gon's hand again and brings it up to his lips.

Obi-Wan makes them breakfast, and Qui-Gon keeps trying to explain what he saw. "Not seeing with my eyes, but a sort of... dimensioned knowing," he says. "I could see upstream and downstream, both directions, and the twist I was standing in. Not standing, but... it was wrapped around me, or I was wrapped around it. There were so many loops of you, but I was still with you... so I could follow..."

"Could you tell how many - " Obi-Wan starts, and then cuts himself off. "Wait, I need to meditate before I ask that question, if I really want to ask it. I find it comforting that there's a downstream, anyways."

Qui-Gon's eyebrows furrow and his presence in the Force seems to flare, a little.

"I don't know," Qui-Gon says. "I don't understand everything I saw. I'm not even sure it was all real. I don't feel like I was quite all there."

"The Whills' story said there was a gift of true knowledge," Obi-Wan says. "Maybe you see more every time you go through."

"I don't know," Qui-Gon says, and continues to look troubled whenever Obi-Wan catches him thinking.

Meanwhile they live out the loop, doing what needs to be done: training, planning, the Gungans, etc. They enter Theed and fight Maul and Qui-Gon seems a little off-step the whole way, but Obi-Wan recalls that having one extra set of memories was the most unbalancing number to have, and he manages to dispatch Maul without Qui-Gon getting in the way and getting hurt. Once it's safe to use the comms again, they contact the Council and hurry through their expected report so they can start explaining the part about Qui-Gon coming back into Obi-Wan's Marmota. The Council is dumbfounded.

"Join another Marmota no Jedi ever has," Yoda says, and some of the Masters are standing up like they're about to start running to the Archives, or try diving into Time right then and there.

"I think there's something stranger here than that," Qui-Gon answers. "Master Yoda, do you... do you see anything?"

"Master Jinn, ask me about the future do you?" Yoda says. "Seen it now you have? Concern you more it does?"

"It concerns me greatly," Qui-Gon says quietly.

The whole Council wants to fly out to Naboo this time, to ask Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan more questions in person, even though Qui-Gon says that this isn't the end of Obi-Wan's Marmota and they won't remember any of this in the next loop. He gets a chorus of "in the Force there is only today"s thrown back at him. Yoda leaves a few of the Masters in charge of the Temple and lets the rest crowd onto the transport. Obi-Wan thinks that maybe he and Qui-Gon will have a little time to themselves while the Masters are in transit, but they keep hologramming with more questions, and Qui-Gon seems withdrawn, anyways, spending hours alone in meditation.

When the Masters get there, they each have their own meditation or exercise they want Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon to try, their own way they want to examine them. Obi-Wan is a little afraid that one of the Masters will suggest trying to join them in the deep connection - although of course he trusts and reveres the Masters, it's uncomfortable to think of trying to merge his energy with Master Yoda, or taking Master Windu so deep into his mind and memories - but Qui-Gon emphasizes a few times how many cycles of practice it took them before they got anywhere, and Yoda announces that "intrude we will not" in a way that precludes anyone else suggesting it.

They still have to sneak away the night of the loop. Qui-Gon proposes it, saying that he's not sure he can find the right detachment with nosy Masters trying to listen in, and points out that there's enough background energy down in the generator complex to make a sort of white noise to anyone outside. There are a few workers around, even late at night, but they sneak in unnoticed, all the way through the catwalks and the laser gates.

"I've never come back here when I wasn't fighting Maul," Obi-Wan says. It's not exactly peaceful, but it's a weighty place, for him. Solemn.

Qui-Gon spreads out the blankets they brought, and then insists on trying the valquilitine again.

"I might be able to detach from my body without it," he says. "But I'm not sure, and... oh, Obi-Wan. I don't want to fail to stay with you."

They lay down. They breathe. They merge.

Obi-Wan thinks he feels it, this time, a falling-away of Qui-Gon's body the instant before he himself is blinking himself back to awake in his bunk on the starship. Qui-Gon feels less stretched, this time, closer and yet further away, like a trick of perspective, or a slant in a direction that Obi-Wan can't really perceive.

Still interwoven with Qui-Gon, he feels a wash of grief from the bunk below him, a deep, aching, almost paralyzing sorrow. Obi-Wan doesn't know why, or what happened, but he climbs down from his bunk and slips in next to Qui-Gon and wraps himself around him, holding on until he's able to speak.

Finally Qui-Gon turns, a little, and nuzzles into his hair.

"Let me show you," he murmurs.

It's easy to fall back into communion, they're still so close in the Force. Qui-Gon shows Obi-Wan his memory of being in the generator complex, and tries to show him what he saw next.

Obi-Wan can't make any sense of it. It's like color without form, and lines without direction, and an uncountable number of something without mass or space. He lets his consciousness slip away from it, back to where he's whispering to Qui-Gon, or maybe speaking without words.

"I don't understand," Obi-Wan says.

"I saw how the knot is cut," Qui-Gon says. "This isn't... this isn't what you think."

"What isn't."

"You," Qui-Gon says. "Your tomorrows... they don't flow through your yesterdays."

"What?"

"This isn't a knot on the bight," Qui-Gon says. "There's a cut. A splice. When you leave the loop, you don't even know there was ever a loop."

"What?" Obi-Wan says again. Definitely with his voice that time. He can feel himself pulling away from Qui-Gon, from the impossibility of what he's saying. "How could I not know?"

"My consciousness comes back, the last time we go around," Qui-Gon says. "Yours - does not."

"No," Obi-Wan says. He rolls out of Qui-Gon's bunk and starts to pace. "That can't be right. You said it was hard to understand what you were seeing."

Qui-Gon sits up in his bunk, watching Obi-Wan. "The Force won't let me not see it," he says.

Obi-Wan shakes his head. He can feel the truth of Qui-Gon's words - the Force is _resonating_ with the truth, like Obi-Wan is inside a giant bell being struck.

" _If_ ," he says, and a little of the pressure lets up. "If... if that was possible. Then what. You defeat Maul and Anakin's your new padawan and I would just have no idea?"

"Oh, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon says. "It feels too cruel to have to tell you."

Obi-Wan freezes, and looks at him.

"Oh," he says. "I die, and you go on. I thought of that back at the very beginning, almost."

"No," Qui-Gon says. "You live. I die, like I was always meant to do."

"WHAT?"

"I die in the generator complex," Qui-Gon says. "You're trapped behind the last laser gate. I saw it."

"That's what happened the first time," Obi-Wan says. "Maybe you were looking in the wrong place."

Qui-Gon shakes his head. "My consciousness survives," he says. "Because of you, because of what you figured out. Your Marmota will be over, but I can continue on in the Force, the same way I came back with you."

"You'll be there without your body," Obi-Wan says. He sinks to his knees at Qui-Gon's feet, staring up at him. "Will I be able to feel you? To talk to you?"

Qui-Gon takes a long, slow breath. "Not right away."

"But..." Obi-Wan says. "But then how will I know? If I don't remember?"

Qui-Gon reaches out and traces a slow line down Obi-Wan's face. "You won't know," he says.

"You're not going to tell me anything," Obi-Wan says, feeling the truth of it in his mouth. "You're not going to tell the Council, either, are you. Everything we've done... everything we know about Marmota. It'll all be lost."

"Not lost forever," Qui-Gon says.

"I won't even know how to fight Maul," Obi-Wan says. " _Everything_... everything I've done." He looks at his hands, and back at Qui-Gon. "It's five years of my life," he says. "I'll be twenty-five again. I won't remember loving you. I won't even be the person you - "

Qui-Gon slips to his knees from the edge of the bunk and braces his hands on Obi-Wan's shoulders. "Not that," he says, leaning in close, and Obi-Wan can hear how his voice is struggling to stay even. "You'll make different memories. Fight different battles. But there's nothing essential about you that you didn't bring into your Marmota, and there's nothing essential you'll leave behind."

"This feels pretty essential," Obi-Wan says, but he can feel the acceptance, there inside of him already, like it's just been waiting for him to catch up. Maybe it should feel cold, like dread, but it's surprisingly warm, like it's something he's already been holding for a long, long time.

"I won't remember," Obi-Wan says. "But you will. Whatever I have to do, to - not go back - I can do it."

"You just let go," Qui-Gon says. "At the heart of the knot, you stay in that moment, and let Time go on without you."

"In the Force there is only today," Obi-Wan says, and then they just hold each other for awhile.

***  
 _Some Jedi consider their Marmota a trial, and some consider it a gift. The only universal in every Marmota is the Force._  
***

As soon as the battle in Theed has quieted, Obi-Wan borrows a ship and flies them to the Lake Country. He's told the Queen that it's important, that Qui-Gon has had a vision and it's something they need to do. Which is basically true, from a certain point of view.

They walk on lake shores and picnic in a lush green meadow. For five days and nights, they share their bodies, and their presence in the Force. Obi-Wan writes Qui-Gon tiny awkward poems about river rocks which are so perfect they have to be put down again exactly where they had been, and swirling leaves that don't care how many times they've spun around. He shows Qui-Gon his memories of the first time he kissed him, the first time he touched Qui-Gon's hair and realized.

Qui-Gon shows him, mind to mind, how to let go of the flow of Time. It's the opposite of letting go of the body, but also the same.

On the last night, Obi-Wan cuts off his padawan braid and burns it in a small, symbolic fire.

They can't be deeply connected for the loop, this time. If Obi-Wan holds on to Qui-Gon's consciousness, he'll just go through the loop again. He doesn't want to do that to either of them, draw it out like that. It's just that they've spent the past five days so commingled that peeling himself away from Qui-Gon feels like losing the air he's been breathing.

" _We were in the chrysalis together_ ," Obi-Wan recites quietly, when they're finally kneeling, facing each other in their room, a space between them in the Force. " _I dissolved, and forgot. You persisted, and remembered. But we are both born new, and who can say what will withstand the next remaking?_ "

Qui-Gon cups his face in his hand, and slowly pulls his hand away.

"I don't know what else to say here," Obi-Wan says. "It's been an honor and a privilege? I love you?"

"I love you," Qui-Gon says. "There is no emotion, there is peace."

"There is no ignorance, there is knowledge," Obi-Wan joins in. "There is no passion - "

***  
...  
***

"…there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force."

Obi-Wan watches as the flames rise around his Master's body. Grief and anger hold him like a fist.

He wonders how it can keep being tomorrow, how time hasn't just ceased to flow.


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short epilogue, mostly taken directly from Revenge of the Sith, including direct quoting/copying of dialogue.

Obi-Wan stands up to follow Bail Organa out of the room, to take up a baby and bring him to a long exile on Tatooine. But Yoda holds out his hand.

"Master Kenobi," he says. "Wait a moment. In your solitude on Tatooine, training I have for you."

Obi-Wan sits back down. There are plenty of Jedi techniques he's never pursued, but it's hard to imagine what use any of them are going to be at this point, with the Jedi Order destroyed and Sith victorious.

"An old friend has learned the path to immortality," Yoda says. "Your old Master."

It's like an eclipse, maybe, or the end of an eclipse, like a bead of brilliant light in the darkness.

"Qui-Gon?" It seems impossible. Maybe there's no death, just the Force, but nobody's ever come back from it, either. But Yoda is serious, and looking at Obi-Wan with almost frightening compassion.

"How to commune with him, I will teach you," Yoda says. "Tell you he says that withstand much, some memories do."

"I don't know what that means," Obi-Wan says, baffled and joyful. "I'm glad he remembers me. I don't understand how this is possible."

"The story I will leave to him," Yoda says, and very faintly, Obi-Wan thinks he feels a presence where, for so long, one has been missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started telling myself the story about Obi-Wan's Groundhog Day on Naboo before the prequels were even done coming out. (My earliest written outline has a 2004 timestamp.) Back then, it was just a story about having time and accepting fate, no force ghosts. Yoda's little scene in Revenge of the Sith opened up a world of canonical togetherness in a Tatooine shack, but left me unsatisfied about this major galaxy-changing force ghost development happening offscreen in a footnote.
> 
> When I started the 30fic project, Obi-Wan was one of the initial set of characters I planned to write about, with the idea of writing this story down. (What's a bad thing you could do to someone turning 30? Maybe make them do half of their 20s over again.) I'm not going to break down which pieces of this got written years ago vs, you know, last week, but it's been a big experiment for me to try to actually write down a story I've told myself so many times in my head. I hope I've been able to get across a little bit of why I've found it so compelling for so long. Thank you for reading.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Duel With Fate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17632544) by [Chantress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chantress/pseuds/Chantress)




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